Mystery auction craze

[Chappy]

I just realized how popular these Mystery Domain Auctions are - especially on eBay. Seems crazy to me, with the only possible winner being the seller.

Reminds me of those old game shows - "Do you want to keep the $10,000 or go for the Mystery Prize behind the curtain?"

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Can't help but think that more than a sizeable chunk of them are scam bidders, or shill bidders, as there really can't be that many suckers; even if one is born every minute.
-Allan

 

[equity78]

You are right allan and ebay should not even allow them. TOS should include all auctions must state exactly what is being auctioned.

 

[carltonleon]

How are they getting away with it ????

It is an absolute joke.

Anybody that bids on these must be very gullable indeed

 

[Halobitt]

Some are entertaining but this one takes the cake.

Is it a dot com, isn't it?

You just know that it ain't gonna be a 3 letter dot com. Some people seem to bid just to find out what the name is and then retract their bid.

Finally the name is "unveiled" and it is FIZ. NAME :D

 

[slaughterbeck]

Can't help but think that more than a sizeable chunk of them are scam bidders, or shill bidders, as there really can't be that many suckers; even if one is born every minute.
-Allan

I’m almost certain that the vast majority are shill bidders but even if a few are for real it makes me wonder why.

You are right allan and ebay should not even allow them. TOS should include all auctions must state exactly what is being auctioned.

I second that.





Best wishes,
Kimmy

 

[GreenGambler]

I think its is a marketing ploy from someone who wanted to be original and make money too.

I would never bid on a mystery auction.....Might as wel close my eyes and hit buttons on the keyboard, see what I come up with and register it....LOL :sold:

 

[Earthian]

they are basically incentivizers ... they bid so as to "win" the bonus incentive set for the first bidder of the various tiers (therefore driving the price up) and then hope that they get outbidded so that they don't pay for the auction while they get the bonus (for free) ...










what is strange is how can they hope that the final bidder (winner) will pay for the auction while they know it is basically another incentivizer like them who is not planning to pay up ... ??? ... this is simple logic ... ??? ... maybe they hope that the auction will become famous and goldenpalace will bid on it and they'll all become rich ... or that some uberstupid person will actually pay at the end ... besides , the only thing they have to lose is an unpaid strike on them ... that's why they usually make bogus accounts to bid or make bogus accounts to outbid themselves hoping for a bigger incentiver will outbid them again so they can collect the bonus(es) ...











shillbidding could also be on the agenta but usually the incentivizers are enough ... the hits are usually that high because they list it in a second category (usually mystery auctions or bizzarre) where people click to see the listings out of curiosity ... and some of them bid too , out of greedosity lol ... similar incentive mystery auctions (non-domain) have been on mystery auctions or bizarre category for many months now ...











there is another thread for mystery domain auctions here on NamePros if you are interested for more info but it has gotten rather long ...

eBay was kind of rough for domains as it was ... now these mystery auctions make it even worse and unprofessional ... there are 31 mystery auctions on eBay right now (12 featured) ... just do a search for "mystery" (title and description) in the domain category ...

eBay allows mystery auctions in general because they atract attention (at least they used to attract back in the days , like when the bizarre category was popular) and because they collect the double category featured insertion listing fees and possibly huge end fees IF a person pays up ...

 

[scrsteven]

I admit one of the auctions is mine, but mine is guaranteed to be a 3 letter .COM.
So it's a mystery LLL.com.
I figured if a .name could be bid up to $150k (fraudulently) a genuine .com would make a good amount.
There are thousands of mystery auctions on ebay- theres no reason to outlaw them- they make ebay money and the sellers money, and if people aren't happy they just wouldn't buy another mystery auction... pretty simple.

 

[AGS]

I still think anyone that buys something without knowing what it is is a prized tit.

You would not buy a car or house without seeing it.

ebay is a joke.

 

[Earthian]

I think that , if a person has something of real value to sell , describes in detail so as to get a better price ...


if you were selling Rolex , would you put in in a bag and started shouting mystery watch ? ... on the other hand , if you saw someone selling tenpacks of music CDs in a closed black box , wouldn't you think that at least 5-7 of them are b-bands ? ...










I said that they make the domain category worse but I did not say that they should be outlawed ... I like the free market ... if a person is willing to sell something at a price and another person is wiling to buy it even without knowing what it is , then I think it is up to them to come to trade ... but on domains where even a minor change of letters can make a change from reg-fee to thousands , I think there should be more transparency ... why ? ... because otherwise the winner just ain't gonna pay for the auction ... if you wanted to buy a CD on eBay and the person told you it is a mystery CD would you buy it ??? ... almost no way ... and that would be just $10 ... think about risking $5,000 or $50,000 ...











scrsteven - no offense ... but why risk getting an non-paying winner (and connected anguish) while if you list a good LLL.com in a featured listing you can get $2,000+ ... a paying-$5,000-for-a-domain-domainer would not pay $5,000 for a domain he doesn't know the name of , even if he knew it is a LLL.com ... because he knows that , if it is a valuable LLL.com , the seller would flaunt it in a featured listing so as to get a fair price (I am not implying anything for your domain , I am speaking in general) ... I think that you would not pay that much for an unknown domain either ... clues does not mean much because they are usually not enough (it is a mystery auction) and even a small letter change can differentiate between carbon and diamonds ... your cost is not much but other people pay double category featured listings and feed on a "hype" that is not making anyone profits but eBay ... you said that "they make ebay money and the sellers money" ... I disagree ... sellers usually lose money (the listing fees) because the winner usually does NOT pay ... all this said in a friendly manner and I am not trying to affect your business or your auction ... but I think you should be prepared for the non-paying bidders who were just drooling over the bonuses ...











AGS (mr 99mil lol) - eBay is no joke ... it is a great online marketplace ... great for sellers (huge market , exposure) , great for buyers (low prices , variety) and great for eBay (profits , fame , traffic) -I am talking in general , not only for domains- ... with the mystery auctions they get some buzz around them and some profits while some careless bidders might end up paying for a worthless box of shredded money ...a good idea might be to restrict mystery auctions in their own category (no second category) and put a couple of warnings for the more inexperienced users ... but that would cut the buzz and the possible profits ... also I do not see in which way it is not a gamble (even though they put those silly "this is not a lottery or raffle" disclaimers) ... especially for the money-only mystery auctions ...

 

[AGS]

AGS (mr 99mil lol) - eBay is no joke ... it is a great online marketplace ... great for sellers (huge market , exposure) , great for buyers (low prices , variety) and great for eBay (profits , fame , traffic) -I am talking in general , not only for domains- ... with the mystery auctions they get some buzz around them and some profits while some careless bidders might end up paying for a worthless box of shredded money ...a good idea might be to restrict mystery auctions in their own category (no second category) and put a couple of warnings for the more inexperienced users ... but that would cut the buzz and the possible profits ... also I do not see in which way it is not a gamble (even though they put those silly "this is not a lottery or raffle" disclaimers) ... especially for the money-only mystery auctions ...

What I hate about ebay (apart from all the dodgy sellers there, and there are many) is that ebay allows crap like these mystery domain auctions yet might pull the plug on legitimate sales with precious little explanation. It has happened to my girlfriend and at least one mate of mine.

 

[Domainate.com]

I personally think it's a shame that anyone does mystery auctions for the simple fact that it degrades the domain market. "Be a dumba$$ and bid on my auction not knowing what you're going to get!" may as well be in the description of all of those auctions.

The closest thing to a mystery auction that I think should EVER be done is what is often done with Magic the Gathering cards. Sellers will repack cards and throw up an auction with about 100 repacks, guaranteeing that 1 of the repacks will have a card worth a couple hundred bucks. Ultimately there is no mystery that if you were to bid on all 100 repacks, you would get that valuable card, and so I don't see any ethical problem with an auction like that. Mystery domain auctions are not guaranteeing anything except that they will probably be the worst quality domain that meets the criteria set forth in the auction. No one would ever throw Dog.com in a mystery auction, but you can almost always count on some stupid person out there bidding on a mystery 3-letter .com auction expecting to get Dog.com. My thing is that I would never sell anything in that manner to someone in person and I bet no one doing a mystery auction would either, so I'm not going to do it online either. I see that as a negative thing for a seller to do whether or not people are willing to bid on those auctions...it's borderline conning. People will bid thousands of dollars on a grilled cheese sandwich with an image supposedly resembling the Virgin Mary, but that doesn't make it ethical to try and make money doing that. Ethics are not a part of the 21st century way of doing business though apparently...at least that's the message eBay is sending by continuing to let these auctions run their course.

P.S. - scrsteven, you know as well as everyone else here that the only reason you are doing a mystery domain auction on your 3 letter .com is because of the first mystery domain auction where a lot of stupid people bid a lot of money on what is likely a crappy .name domain, and thought you may as well get on the train and make more than what your name is worth on the market while you can, ethical or not. You pretty much state as such in your post, so I guess as long as you don't mind some people thinking less highly of you, why not eh?

 

[scrsteven]

P.S. - scrsteven, you know as well as everyone else here that the only reason you are doing a mystery domain auction on your 3 letter .com is because of the first mystery domain auction where a lot of stupid people bid a lot of money on what is likely a crappy .name domain, and thought you may as well get on the train and make more than what your name is worth on the market while you can, ethical or not. You pretty much state as such in your post, so I guess as long as you don't mind some people thinking less highly of you, why not eh?

You are right that I listed my own mystery auction with a .com because I think the mystery hype will cause bids to go over what they usually would. I own 13 LLL.com's and all but one are worth at least 5k if I openly posted the name- I know because I have sold/brokered over 65 LLL.com's in the last 2 months. I doubt anyone else can say that. There is absolutely no ethical problem with this at all- people bid on mystery auctions for the thrill of surprise. If you do so otherwise you are just wasting your money. If you can't afford to bid then don't. You might get a gem of a name or you might get my worst LLL.com (well you won't because I already said no Q's and my worst is SQW.com). All the other are either pronounceable or have good letters and tons of companies using those letters.

If I get a non-paying top bidder, I will leave negative feedback and pursue him by other means. His reputation on the internet will be severely crippled, whether or not he is a domainer.

 

[AGS]

people bid on mystery auctions for the thrill of surprise.

Yup you are right there.

Some chump will end up winning on some mystery auctions for a crap .name or some other arse extension and wondering why the hell he paid all that money for it lol.

 

[JYM]

If I had a lot of money, I'd bid on one of these things just to get lots of traffic to my site(s). However, when there are many many mystery auctions out there, then it ruins it because the idea is no longer unique. It's just like the milliondollarhomepage.com (pixel) idea, which was cool when I first saw it but later on I started hating pixel sites because of all the copycats. The same will go for any new idea IMO.

 

[mgt]

.
Finally the name is "unveiled" and it is FIZ. NAME :D

Is that really the name of the $150,000 dollar eBay mystery name or are you joking?

 

[AGS]

Is that really the name of the $150,000 dollar eBay mystery name or are you joking?

Hey don't spoil the ebay sellers next idea:

What mystery domain name was my mystery domain name? LMFAO!

 

[Earthian]

AGS - eBay is a big company ... in big companies together with the good things (variety , prices , etc) sometimes "bad" things come also (slower support , mistakes , etc) ... if someone reads (to some extent) their terms and their help pages and be cooperative with them (eg. questions about policies or rules) before he makes a listing , I think their conduct is of high standards ... of course mistakes again could possibly occur ...








Crooky - The intricacy of domains (where a very small difference can mean huge value difference) dictates that mystery domain auctions are in general of low esteem ...








scrsteven - you must understand that they do not bid for the thrill of surprise ... they bid for the incentives ... for example , try listing a mystery auction without bonuses ... the bidding will be low ... most of these bidders are not gamblers they are people trying to make a buck cheaply ...

the people above don't "attack" your auction per se ... I think your auction in particular has some certain "truth" in it ... they are just saying that people logically would not spend a small fortune for an unknown domain in these mystery auctions ... especially if it could just be a .bogus ... or bogus.

one more thing ... how are you gonna pursue getting your money if the buyer does NOT really have it ? ... sue him for a rather low value eBay mystery auction ? ... would it worth the time and costs ? ... especially if he did not have the means to pay ? ...

also ... ruining his reputation ? ... people know about these auctions and about the non-paying bidders and they don't put the whole blame on the buyer (of course I do not condone not paying for an auction you won) but they also think that the seller was somewhat aware of what was coming to him (due to the incentives) ...








JYM - the traffic would be minimal because there is no big suspense ... it has wore off ... too many small time mystery auctions ...








mgt - check this auction ... it was the first 3 letter .com mystery auction ... it ended (early by the seller) at $151,100 after it had bids of up to $99MIL (I wonder who that was :p) ... check the bid history ... of course I don't think the buyer will pay ... the domain remains unknown ...

... and this ... the self-proclaimed first mystery domain auction ... (although I personally have seen one more in the past some time ago) ... ended at $6,100 ... everybody knew it was not a .com otherwise he would not have mentioned all those other extensions ... the domain remains unknown though most speculate it was something like a .name ...

 

[equity78]

I think its great no one pays and to go after someone when their was nothing to verify a contract makes it hard to go after them Maybe all the no pays EBAY will clean their auctions up