On Mon, 07 May 2001 06:04:50 GMT, Roy Gordon wrote:

>I'm in the market for a digital camera so I thought I've been checking
>out those on Ebay and Yahoo auctions for the last few weeks. In
>particular I'm interested in the Fuji Finepix 2400 or the Olympus 2100,
>the latter for the long zoom.
>
>What I've noticed is the following: when one of these is up for auction,
>the bidding usually goes up beyond, and often well beyond, the least
>expensive total price on the pricegrabber comparison site.
>
>Is there some reason for this that I don't understand?
>
>-- Roy
>
>(Sometimes I know there are extras, but often it's just what you get NIB
>without any extras thrown in.)

What an excellent question - for social-scientists...! ;-)
Personally, I dislike auctions, and recent experiences have
reinforced this. I rarely visit eBay, but in the couple of
times I have, I paid "even-more-than-new" for a recently
introduced Nikkor I hadn't tried that was going for such
a low price that in the seven minutes remaining on the
auction when I found it, I didn't bother to check
current prices on this short-lived-in-Nikon's-line
"pop-bottle-bottom"; in another case I bid on a camera
body I was looking for (and got it) at a price that was
very close to "NYC-new", though for a couple of years the
price had discounted at a few hundred more (shoulda done the
simple research....). I don't get caught up in last minute
bidding-up excitement, and I don't bid outrageous amounts
on common items in temporarily high demand (like Nikon F
prisms), and I'm an experienced use-gear buyer generally
familiar with current values, yet even so,........;-)
BTW, whenever I have tried to sell first-rate gear
on eBay, it has gone for too little, in
complicated deals, so I guess
the moral of this tale is:
"avoid the auction sites".