How are people getting Apple iMacs for $170.25? How about Nikon D90 Cameras (with lens kit) for $115.50? They are bidding in Dubli’s Unique Auction and winning. I want to learn how they are doing it and teach all of you. (And as I learn more and we begin to discuss this, there is a good chance that I will close this topic to member’s only. So register now to keep updated.)
If new, first click here to learn about Dubli and the Unique Bid Auction.
There are two messages that I have received as I have bid in the Unique Bid Auctions:
1) “Your bid of $XX.xx is neither unique nor the lowest single offer.”
2) “Your bid of $XXX.xx is unique, but not the lowest unique offer.”
I suppose there is a third, that I have yet to see, that says “Your bid of $XX.xx is the lowest unique offer.” (I’d love to see this message with 2 seconds to go. I hope to soon.)
Make sure that you check your “Current Auction” page after you have bid. It will tell you what your current status is in the acutions that you have bid on. For me on one of the auctions, I got message #2 above until the last 20 minutes, when it changed to message #1. I then bid some more, but never got anything but message #1 after that.
Some lessons:
1) You might assume, as I did, that if you place a fairly low bid that is unique, but not the lowest unique, that once it is no longer unique, the lowest bid MUST be above where you last bid. This is NOT the case. (Example: the iMac that went for $170 – I was bidding in the $400s thinking the lowest unique would be there or above based on my prior bidding. I was wrong.)
2) If you have bid multiple times, your ‘Current Auctions’ tab only shows you the status of one of the bids. I guess, but am not sure, that it will always show you the status of bids in this order: 1) Unique and Lowest, 2) Unique but not lowest (the lowest of these if there are multiple) 3) If all of your bids are not unique, then it shows this status and chooses the lowest of your bids to show. (This all needs to be confirmed.)
3) If you bid a range of bids, you get an e-mail with the status of each bid – check your spam folder if you don’t see it right away. Its important to find out the status ASAP. Then you can see the status change, as it does, in your ‘Current Auction’ page. (In the manner I explained in #2, above.)
Some ideas (but no guarantees):
1) Bid $160 worth of bids in a long range where you think the auction will end. For example, this iMac auction ends on 5/6/2009. You could bid from $165 to $215 and get every bid in that range. (Since the last iMac ended at $170.25, this MIGHT be a good range to try. If you get the iMac for, say $210.25 because that is the lowest unique bid, you’ve spent $370.25 for a brand new iMac. Not bad. THIS PLAN IS VERY RISKY. – You might bid $160 worth of bids and get nothing. But remember, right now, there aren’t that many customers on dubli. If you plan to do something like this, do it before dubli really starts to advertise.
2) Bid a very low range and then a range where you think the item will end up based on previous auctions. Then, as the status of the bids in the low range changes to ‘Your bid is neither unique of lowest’, you can know that the lower bids are filling up. (Of course, its difficult to know if there is a low bid that is still unique.) This will give you some information about where to place new bids (maybe in the middle of the two ranges you started with). Again, there certainly are no guarantees with this plan.
3) Bid $0.75 to $1.75 on every auction. This will change (especially as people read this post) but right now there are a lot of auctions that ended in this range.
(I just love 3 item lists.)
I know that a community working on this can come up with some great ideas to increase our chances of getting really cheap good stuff. Why not join the discussion?
