How common are abandoned auctions these days?

The bots picked up Atiyah sim for 3.58/sqm, and I contacted the seller to see if it was a mistake because according to SL's auction website, the sim had sold yesterday for $1,021USD. By my calculations that would be roughly L$278,988 including the fees, or 4.25/sqm.

The seller told me she bought the sim for $783 USD from SL. I questioned her about that because the website says it sold for $1,021 USD. She said that the auction winner backed out and SL called her to see if she wanted it. I would have assumed that it would have gone for $1020 USD, but apparently not.

How common do you think this is? Was it a one off event or are sims selling from SL for far less than even the low prices showing on the auction page?

Wow. Wish I knew the answer to that question. But, inexperienced as I am in US$ auctions, I don't even understand what happened in this case. If US$1021 was the winning bid, could it really be that the next lower bid was US$783 ? Or was LL desperate enough to work any deal to avoid having to auction the sim again? (And isn't there a floor somewhere near here, like US$750 ? Seems doomsday is closer than even I expected. )

As far as I understood all bids were final and you had to have the money for it

If you can say at the last minute oh no, i can't do that now... what is to stop someone from buying up the next round of land auctions for pennies on the dollar by scam bidding super high and saying oops

I am not sure of the details. The seller said if the auction loser said no, SL would call the next person in line. I do not know if she was 2nd or 3rd or whatever in line.

There is a starting price of $750 per mainland sim, so SL letting it go for L$783 makes me think they should just put mainland sims in the land store like private sims. Just order it as you need it.

I wish I understood SL's objectives. I understand cheap land so there's less of a barrier to entry for new residents, but I expected to see a PR push with the new CEO to bring in new residents and that has completely failed to materialize.

This happens all the time on Ebay. Some jerk decides to just bid it up, no intention of paying. Maybe they didn't expect to win.

So the next person in line ends up bidding against themselves...

You need to consider, if the winning bidder backed out, did they erase all those bids?

That must be the explanation.
LL would ignore all bids by the person backing out and then go back to the lowest bid that actually outbid everyone else.

With the automatic charging, maybe the cc bounced or the bank transaction declined.

If the winning price was US$1,021 then LL offered it to her at US$783, I'd say the answer is yes.

It's not the initial price of land that keeps me from buying, it's the ongoing cost. Cheap land is not for the new players, it's to intice the existing (addicted) player base to go premium and tier up. For me to do any kind of build I need 4K sqm of land (900 prims) and I do see me getting US$30 worth of use out of it. Especially not as the part time player I have become.

So if the winning bid was done by an "alt" to drive the price up...and the person next in line is sure to get the region cheaper, by as much as 300usd? Sounds like this could easily be gamed. Am I missing something?

That is precisely what I was wondering - is the auction system being gamed?

However, a forum regular asked at Jack Linden's office hour about this specific situation and Jack said the person who won the auction is the person who got the land.

Unless Jack is wrong, it turns out the person who dumped the land on the bots was just not telling the truth for whatever reasons.

I knew I should have couched my OP in "If this person is telling the truth..."

That is precisely what I was wondering - is the auction system being gamed?

However, a forum regular asked at Jack Linden's office hour about this specific situation and Jack said the person who won the auction is the person who got the land.

Unless Jack is wrong, it turns out the person who dumped the land on the bots was just not telling the truth for whatever reasons.

I knew I should have couched my OP in "If this person is telling the truth..."

There once was (is?) a policy in place that basically fines anyone for repeated auction failure, ultimately denying the person from using the auction system at all.

Problem is the money that is involved can result in someone making alts and using them to get around it

I have several fears regarding exploits of the new auction system which would be both unethical and probably banworthy to test. Problem is, I don't know how we'll ever get firm answers about whether the exploits are possible.

There seems to be evidence that some folks have figured the system out.

I have theory their is auction raise the price Linden who bids against the residents in hopes of getting more money when no one bids higher he or she backs out and LL gives the person who had highest bid before the auction raise the price linden does....
It is theory but I have no clue if this is true.

Just to be clear on this particular case: from the information we're currently given, somebody paid Linden Labs US$1021 for a sim and turned around and sold it for US$783, presumably having to eat the sim's US$195 monthly tier for the privilege of owning it until the bots grabbed it.

If this is correct... maybe I'm missing a trick, but it's not obvious how this would make a very profitable exploit. But it's also not obvious to me what really happened and why.

Nope, someone bit 1021
but they refused or reneged on the deal and it went to the 783 bid

As i read it

Right, that was the OP, but then:(I was the "forum regular" who asked Jack about this. I didn't mean to be secretive about it, but it wasn't really my story to tell here.) The reason this was all so mysterious in the first place was the huge discrepancy between $1021 and $783. As mentioned in the OP, the next-lower bid should have been (and apparently was) $1020, because the automated bidding in these blind auctions increment by just US$1 with each bid (L$10 in the L$ auctions). So even if the winning bidder had set a *maximum* bid of US$2000, their *actual* winning bid would be just US$1 more than the next-highest bidder.

The main reason I took an interest in this is the sometimes astonishingly high prices that are being paid for *L$* auctions, that are often followed by the whole parcel being sold-off immediately for substantially less than the auction price. This was raised in a thread here a few months ago, so I've been kinda watching the auctions occasionally. If it happened just here and there, sure, could be "auction fever" and simple screw-ups. But it seems too common for that--and yet, I'm hard-pressed to figure out how it could benefit those over-bidders (even in the unlikely theory that they're Lindens in disguise).

Presumably not relevant to this case as it turned out: Jack also mentioned that sometimes the US$ bidders are confused and think they're bidding L$, causing them to renege. Jack also described the "restocking fee" and "suspension from auctions if you back out twice" penalties, to Des's point.

Isn't the $100 restocking fee still in effect?