Pease help this ebay newb with bidding confusion...

[leoblob]

I am interested in this video card: http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0116032032.

They have four for sale. Does this mean that the four highest bids each get one? If I bid $102 (and that was the 2nd highest bid, assuming all stays the same as when I'm first posting this), would I get one? ... and therefore one of the people who bid $100 would lose out?

And why did the one guy bid $195 when all the other bids are $100?

[ryengineer]

They have four for sale. Does this mean that the four highest bids each get one? If I bid $102 (and that was the 2nd highest bid, assuming all stays the same as when I'm first posting this), would I get one? ... and therefore one of the people who bid $100 would lose out? And why did the one guy bid $195 when all the other bids are $100?

Lets say a person likes all cards and would like to buy all of them. So while bidding, ebay system will ask for quantity and bidding price and that person will pay $200(suppose!) each for every single card he will be buying. OR the other situation which this auction is facing at the moment is, different bidders(4) want one each and will pay the bid price corresponding to their quantities.

The first person has bid his highest amount of $195, that's what he wants to pay for 1 card and the others $100 each. Yes, you'll be the second highest bidder with $102 bid. Be sure to select appropriate quantity you're looking for.

[rkawakami]

There is a link on that eBay page which tries to explain what happens with a mutiple item auction (aka, "Dutch Auction"):

multiple item auctions

Here's another site which give a couple of examples:

http://www.ukauctionhelp.co.uk/dutch.php

Essentially what happens is that the minimum winning bid becomes the basis on which the items will be sold. These bids are NOT the same as a regular eBay proxy bid. The amount of your bid must be over the minimum winning bid in order to "win" the item(s). In other words, for this auction, you have to be at least the fourth highest bid.

What's the minimum winning bid? That's the price at which all items in the auction can be accounted for, in this case, 4. At the moment, that would be $100. The person who bid $195 would actually only pay $100 since there are 4 items and only 4 bids. Assuming that you place a bid of $100.01 then you would become the third highest bidder (1 @ $195, 2 @ $100.01 and 1 @ $100).

The person @ $195 is betting that no more than 3 other people will go over his bid.

edit: Here's an example that I just participated in:

PC133 512 mb laptop memory

My bid of $41.88 was the minimum winning bid since there were 7 items being offered. The person who bid "over" me at $45.99 also ended up paying $41.88 for his two modules.

[leoblob]

My thanks to both of you. It makes sense now.

For some reason, these various bidding processes confuse the hell out of me. I did originally go to that ebay link on the "dutch auction," and I didn't completely follow that, either.