Japanese Militaria at Castle-Thunder.com

[gwsiii]

I fell in to a little bit of a trap this weekend. I was bidding on an item for my Dad, offered in a 'Dutch Auction' on gunbroker. A 'Dutch Auction' is similar to a normal auction except that there is more than 1 of the items being offered in the same auction. After reading through the rules on 'Dutch Auctions' at gunbroker, it looked like they worked the same way as a normal auction with the exception that there is no 'auto bid' and you bid on 1 or more of the items offered with the winning bid being the lowest winning amount.

Here's the scenario, 2 items, $35 minimum bid.
2 widgets offered at $35, person 'A' bids $35 for 1, person 'B' bids $50 for one, Person 'C' bids $36 for one.
Person 'A' loses out, being outbid by both persons 'B' and 'C'. Since the lowest winning bid is $36, both person 'B' ($50 bid) and person 'C' ($36 bid) win 1 item each at $36. Okay, I can deal with that.

The rules seemed to back this up. This is how I expected it the work.

In reality:
There were two items being offered, the opening bid was $35, I bid $50 for my dad. The auction showed 1 bid, in the amount of $35. I figured that wasn't so bad. When the auction ended, I received the obligatory 'congratulations, you won email' with an invoice for $50 + shipping. Why, if the auction showed that I won at $35, was I getting an invoice for $15 more than my winning bid? After contacting gunbroker, I found out, there is an undocumented rule, that if there are no other bids, your maximum bid becomes the selling price, regardless of what it says on the auction page. If there been another bidder, who bid $35, I would have won the auction at $35, since there wasn't another bidder, I was held responsible for the maximum bid that I place, even though it was never reached through the auction process. The Seller appeared to be aware of this 'loophole' and seems to be profiting from it. After contacting the seller initially about the envoice, seller replied it was that it was something I would have to take care of with gunbroker, as gunbroker would charge him the final value fee at $50.

What have I learned?
Don't bid on a dutch auction on gunbroker, or at least, bid the minimum acceptable bid, and only 'up' it if you really must have one or more of the items in question. I don't believe ebay's dutch auctions work this way, maybe someone else can 'chime in'. I'm just lucky it wasn't one of those 'money is no object' things. Learn something new every day! Trey
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I didn't pay to much for that old Arisaka, I just bought it a little bit too soon!

[Mike Rockhill]

I know about dutch ovens!
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Fat, Drunk,and Stupid is no way to go through life son.

[03man]

What a crazy rule. Thanks for posting, I'll be sure not to bid on a dutch auction a GB.
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03man