auction vs. best offer

First, let me state that my family is in the auction business; I've worked a lot of auctions myself, and I know *exactly* what an auction is.

My intention is to post an ad asking for "best offer over $X", and I keep getting dinged for posting an ad that's really an auction. But this is NOT an auction; it is, in reality, a sealed-bid sale.

I have reworded the ad, but it does not now express my desired intent NOT to simply accept the first offer of $X that comes along. I've seen numerous ads that say "best offer over $X" or "I'll collect offers for a week and accept the best one", and I don't understand why I am being prohibited from doing the same.

I respect Astromart's right to run the site and enforce the rules as they see fit, and it is always my intention to comply with Astromart's desires. I just feel as though my ad is being singled out here ...

In what way is this not an auction? You set a minimum bid and will accept the highest bid you get. That is an AUCTION. And belongs in the Auction section.

Terry,
Here is how I see it. You place an ad and ask a price, then you can also state "Or Best Offer". But this implies to me, the best offer under the stated price. So, if I were to make an OFFER, it would be for less than your price. Anything other than this is a auction or one type or another, sealed, silent or what ever, it is an auction.

So, reading through the thread:

The prevailing opinion is that "$X or best offer" is:

....OK if it means "I will sell to the first qualified person who offers $X, or the qualified person who offers the most, even if it is less than $X ?" (Edited from "not $X)

....Not OK if it means "I will wait to see what people are offering and sell to the person who offers the most?"

Alex

I find this thread interesting and am curious as to what is the considered opinion on this...

I place an ad that says something like this...

I am strongly considering selling "object Y" (with descriptions and pictures)...if you are interested in it let me know how much you are willing to pay.

I'll decide by a stated date if I will sell it or not...

Is this an auction?

Does the same logic hold if I place a similar ad as a buyer (I want to buy and will consider your goods over a period of time)...

Just curious...

Let me approach this from a slightly different direction. Suppose the item being sold is, in some way, unique, such that there is really no market-analysis way to determine a fair sales price. By "fair" here, I mean not just fair for the buyer, but fair for the seller as well. In such a situation, how is the seller to go about setting an asking price?

One way to do this would be by auction. The seller can put the item up for auction with an extremely high (and secret) reserve price and let the bidding begin. But lots of buyers do not like auctions because of the "can you top this" atmosphere and the mounting pressure as the close of the auction approaches. Further, lots of buyers do not like reserve auctions because of the game of repeatedly inching up the bid in the hopes that the "reserve not met" banner will finally come down -- but in this case, the banner "won't" come down. The seller has placed a high reserve on the auction because the seller has no way of determining the market price in advance. Indeed, this situation often results in angry buyers, which is no good for the seller at all.

Now it's all well and good to say "set the reserve at the minimum you will take for the item", but that's forgetting that, in this situation, there is no a priori way for the seller to determine the fair market value. Remember that we want to determine a price that's fair for the *seller*, too, not just the buyer.

A much better procedure, and one that's often used in such cases, is the sealed-bid sale. Prospective buyers submit one and only one bid, unknown to all other buyers, at their leisure and prior to some deadline. There is none of the emotional pressure of an impending deadline and none of the frustration of seeing "reserve not met" as you raise your bid higher and higher trying to make it go away. The seller then either accepts the highest bid or rejects all bids -- no pressure, no frustration, no anger.

That's why I (and others before me) opted for a "best offer over $X" type of ad. Astromart has declared such ads to be out of bounds, and that gets no argument from me -- their site and their rules. I'm just pointing out here that a reserve auction is a poor substitute in such cases.