Unlike eBay, too many people on Pinside with close friends to help them drive up the price. No thanks.

This is incredibly smart. Wish more online auctions did this.

I’m torn on the topic really i see both sides equally, and since it seems people are falling for scams left and right anyway apparently, what’s the harm?

If done correctly, it wouldn’t harm the integrity of the site or the traditional selling platform.

There are already enough "bidding wars" on facebook and craigslist that kill off many great deals. I personally do not want it.

If, however, bids have no convenience fee or seller's fee, then maybe it might work. But I'm still leaning against it.

Would it be feasible to somehow link up with a freighter/crater/shipper to make transactions easier.There are many deals I and others have passed up on because of the hassle of not being a local buyer.

Why not? If you don’t like the idea, don’t use the auction option.

Good point!
Pinside Marketplace Auction=bad idea.

Like I mentioned earlier, this lasted about a half hour. Imagine how many hurt feelings there would be in an auction setting on pinside.

GLWT!!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-fire-sale-thread

I vote No unless Pinside is going to provide escrow services. Already so many threads of whiners and complainers about misrepresented items, shipping delays, scammers. It would have to offer something special to alleviate more of that: to me that would be mandatory escrow clearinghouse backed by Pinside and part of Pinside transaction fee. And need clear pickup/delivery rules. I would agree to try on parts first before pins.

I think one of the truly irreconcilable thoughts of the auction proposal is how to deal with locality. I think half of the reason I check inside is to check for games for sale within driving distance. Generally speaking, the $250-$750 to ship an auction game usually puts it in the category of "not worth it" or "someone else will get it locally for the proper price".

I don't think there's much harm in auctions though. Just a lot of gray area.

For in-person auctions, auction houses, and auctioneers, yes, that is certainly the case. However, for online auctions, there are very few regulations and laws in place. From what I understand, online auctions fall into the area of contract law for the most part.

I should clarify.No to auctions.Yes to correct pricing.And hell yeah to a pinside dedicated shipper.Could be the indica though.

As long as Pinside takes responsibility for all mediation and resolve disputes between parties if a deal goes bad, I don't see a problem.

I’d say have an option to sell on market or auction .Everything is pick a side nowadays I’m a fence guy where options rule this is America still right ?

Unfortunately, that sounds like a huge potential amount of additional work/hassle to take on. Is Pinside prepared for all that?

Ha no.

They’d be insane to do something like this.

No, I’d rather buy from an ad/in person.

I have enjoyed meeting people through the market ...That would end with straight auction.

Could the OP add a "Hell no!" to the poll options? TIA

I'll start this auction at $1.99 for a pair of used Stern coil stops.

No reserve!

Sorr Datitude I re read .Its a auction option imo that would make things easier for the casual and probably bring new pins to the market here .My only ? is how would the condition of each be advertised .In other words how do you trust the seller on the condition and play as I only have purchased local where you show up with agreed $ and if there are issues then the negotiation starts again .Thanks and glad to have pinside reguardless!!

On Ebay there are bots that will make a bid when the auction is almost over. Which is unfair, obviously. I know most people will agree with me on this, but just in case you do not I will elaborate. If you agree with me than feel free to skip this part.

Let us call the person who the bot-bidder outbids the outbid party.
In a case where the outbid party would have outbid the bot-bidder if they had time to respond to the bot-bid, then:
The seller loses out, because they could have received more money than they did.
The outbid party loses out, because they would have been willing to pay more but didn't because of a robot which perverts the normal and expected course of an auction (that is, to sell the object to the person willing to pay the highest price for it).

There are a lot of ways to solve the problem of bot-bidding. I hope at least one of them would be implemented in pinside's auctionhouse.
1. Have each bid extend the auction deadline by a certain amount of time, say 30 minutes. There could be a maximum amount of extensions, only a handful would be needed in most cases.
2. If the auction runs from monday to friday around midnight, the auction could pick a random minute from 10:30 to 11:59 and end the auction then. The bot can't bid at the last minute if it doesn't know precisely when the last minute will be. If the bot chooses to out-bid at 10:30, the non-bot outbid party will have on average 45 minutes to respond. At which point the bot could outbid again. But at least the bot would be forced to a higher price than it otherwise might be, making botting less advantageous (but still advantageous).
3. Maybe ebay found some clever technical way to stop the bot bidding problem a long time ago, for all I know.
Edit: If everyone was auto-bidding up to their maximum price than that would be fair, but it seems to me like there might be vulnerabilities/problems with that system.

$2.25

great idea, what could possibly go wrong.......

Even though this sounds like a great idea and it would work just fine for 98% of us, the other 2% would probably fvck it all up. I'm sure the job of moderator on Pinside is tough enough. Add in having to police something as complicated as withdrawn items at the last minute, fake bidding and the limits to which people with grievances real or imagined are willing to take things. Much as I would like to see auctions happen, I recommend that the moderators give the downside and possible liabilities of this a long hard consideration.

I hope this debacle never comes to Pinside.

How could it be stopped from turning into the hugest mess ever ?

Bitching about the item. About the condition of the item. What it might sell for. When it sells, what it went for. Add in delays in item shipping, or paying for item. Bad seller bad buyer unlimited.

Add in tons of PM's.

Great in theory. Poor in practice.

LTG : )

How many more mods would be needed to deal with this ?

LTG : )

Totally agree!
Leave Pinside as is. There's already enough drama here!

Would be interesting how they'll handle someone being banned from the auction for bitching etc. when they are the current bid winner or are actively bidding on an item when banned.

I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but the responses here are predictable.

As a software entrepreneur, I have brought products and features to market for years. I learned early on not to ask “do you want” or “would you use” questions.

Many people/users don’t like change and can’t envision how something new will work or benefit them.

Asking users if they “want” a product or feature supposes that they have the context, data, and vision to know how the solution will be implemented or will evolve. You get lots of opinions, but not great insight.

Studying user behavior, asking users specific questions, and testing functionality/user acceptance is where the learning and insight is gained.

I’m assuming that the reason for this is to try and drive more sales on to the site, thereby increasing revenues. The thing is that if you commit to an auction here, I’d assume it blocks you from listing your pin elsewhere. A lot of sellers already offer a slight “Pinside Discount” on their pins bc they know that the community here is more educated on the factors that drive pricing, and will push back on poorly priced listings. The benefit of an auction for the seller is that it should theoretically drive a higher price for your sale, but sellers aren’t listing here to drive the highest price. They’re listing here to drive the quickest sale.

So for the people who are already willing to take a lower price to sell a pin faster, you’re asking them to reduce the audience who will see their listing (ie not also listing on FB or CL where more newbies are likely to start), plus they have to wait for a listing to close before they can see the $. For the people who want to drive the highest price, you’re asking them to list on a site that is the least likely to overpay (ie the most educated buyers) and again commit to a smaller subset of buyers.

With that in mind, what’s the value proposition that Pinside would be offering to make the deal attractive to one or both types of pin sellers that would drive a greater volume of listings to the site?

I think it's a good idea as long as pinside can offer the same protections to buyers that other auction sites offer.

If not, then scrap it.

This sounds like a huge pain in the ass to maintain, and will be ripe pickings for fraudulent sellers. eBay sucks, but they have a lot of horsepower at their disposal to deal with people gaming the system. Their 10% fee on the sale is too much though. If you want to throw a bunch of time at something on this site, fix the Pinside store problems and figure out how to integrate a domestic and international shipping calculator into the individual listings, using USPS and UPS through Paypal. UPS shipping rates are significantly cheaper when purchased through paypal.com/shipnow. Pinside is losing a ton of fees because this has not been figured out, and most orders must be completed off site.

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well, this would be just an option (not sure it would be very used).
nothing new compared to ebay, but it would prevent some sellers here from putting their sale on ebay and posting here in the same time the link for the sale to say "hi guys, i need some folks to bid and get more money".

i'm pretty sure the idea comes from this current ad about the rick and morty game for sale.

Doesn't change anything for me, 99.99% of sales finish when i'm sleeping!

Now that I've had a full nights sleep, I've changed my poll answer to no....

No auctions. Consider banning links to ebay promoting ebay listings if ebay is cutting into pinside revenue.

I’m also one who has been selling on EBay since the 90’s. Most of my so called auctions are buy it now so they’re not really auctions anyway. Also everything I lost on eBay is first listed here and on FB. As far as real auctions I only do that for parts. Not a fan of auctioning off games. Really could care less to have auctions here. That’s what’s “or best offer is for” list a little high and see what offers you get.

If this happens...RIP pinside

Good grief NO Auctions!!!
The bad blood and backbiting will increase triplicate.

Pinside is not the place - bad move - just...no.

Pinside should not turn into Ebay and do straight auctions, but could absolutely increase the number of sales facilitated through pinside. Pinside should push for more pinball sales and pinball machines changing hands, not increased sales price. One way to do this would be to have an option to make offers public, yet anonymous to anyone other that the seller. The last several machines I’ve sold I’ve had multiple, multiple trade and cash offers on.
Check the last posts in my old for sale ads for example.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/loaded-jurassic-park-pro-trades-cash-welcomed
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fish-tales-loaded-ampamp-super-nice-trades-welcomed
What I would propose would be that for each for sale ad, you could either keep it exactly the way pinside is now, or force public offers. If you forced public offers, messages concerning the sale would be made public, but anonymized with (a buyer 231 miles away from the seller) messaged, “How about my nice Demo Man with the following pictures for you Taxi?. A buyer (72 miles away messaged) I’ll take it! $2200 full cash offer and can pick up Tuesday, check my feedback! This would offer several advantages to the buyer and the seller. The seller would have competing offers advertised to others, so there would be an incentive to put your best foot forward. Not quite an auction, but something similar with the ability to trade. People proposing trades and trying to buy would not only have their offers visible to others, giving rise to the potential of others outbidding them in trades or cash, but could also be contacted about the purchase of the machines they are offering. Now maybe that Demo Man offer doesn’t get the deal, but someone can contact him about buying his Demo Man. But wouldn’t that lead to Pinside getting less cash for sale ad transactions? Not if the competing bids were kept anonymous, with the option to message other sellers about their bids for a small fee ($2.00). Remember, the bids are anonymous to all except the seller. This would also have the secondary effect of allowing pinsiders to potentially scammers as more people would be aware of the traffic.
It's a complicated idea, but I could see it resulting in the exchange of more pins, raising more capital for pinside, and resulting in better deals for everyone.
Looking back at the offers I had in my linked for sale ads, wouldn’t you love to be able to reach out to some of those folks to buy or trade for their machines?
Just my 2 cents.

"Do you want auctions on Pinside?"

FFS no.

Looks like the "Nos" have it. 63% say F-you to auctions.

Also from all the responses I've seen, all the "yes" answers come with a million caveats.

I emailed Robin a few months back with an idea.....
For years I've seen way to many sellers of games not paying the piper to pinside.
Always baffles me. Are people that cheap that when they sell a multi thousand dollar game they can't throw pinside a bone? The answer is yes!
Thousands of dollars have gone down the drain for pinside.
They promote there games on pinside, many ads have discussion threads. Games sell, no donation.
I feel every Pin listing for sale ad should have a fee. Pay pinside upfront to list the game.
The fee can be structured to starting price.
1% seems pretty fair, $100 game pays a buck. $10000 game pays $100 upfront.

Pinside auctions? Hmm, good idea...

"Because there aren't enough dumpster fire ad threads already"

"Because Jerry Springer jumped the shark and middle age dudes need their drama fix"

"Because the mods are self-loathing masochists"

"Because that's August's disaster for the year 2020"

Take your pick!

Nope!

Nope

Instead of auctions, how about more of an eBay Buy It Now model with best offer available? Possibly even have payment processing options for machines (or maybe just mods/parts) through the website. Easier for Pinside to tack on a fee that way on transactions.

No thanks, Leave the online auctions to Ebay.

Could work as a way of collecting offers over a period of time where everyone could see all offers but not bidders. Seller would get to see bidder info. Then the seller could choose to work through the bids in any order they see fit (e.g., pick a more experienced buyer or closer buyer if the difference is only $50 or something). Let buyers & sellers work out payment on their own. If the machine is not as described I don't see how it's any worse than responding to an ad on Pinside today. Could be a good way for sellers to figure out where the market is on something if they're not sure how to value it. But I can see how the flippers around here would hate it since it would definitely favor the seller.