The Myth of Bidding up Auctions

There is a conspiracy theory that surfaces from time to time asserting that land brokers purposely bid up auctions to keep overall market land prices high.

Today's auctions are yet another indication that this simply is not true. Sims these days are bought by a variety of residents, many of whom are not players in the day to day land resale game. One "no name" bidder was responsible for most of today's sales.

Auction prices go high because the demand for Mainland sims is still high. There is no evil plot underneath it all. Just supply and demand dictating the market once again.

Yes, and that no-name bidder is the main Mainland operative of a certain well-known island owner.

I was more intrigued by the group that "no name" bidder belonged to. I however am not naive enough to think that a few unscrupulous land brokers have never placed some questionable bids. I find it difficult to believe that the brokers I speak of get auction fever and temporarily lose their mind. There may not be a conspiracy but I simply can't buy the assertion that none do it.

Also, the account which bid on several auctions last week, several of which went up again last night, can no longer be found using people search.

I have no doubt that bidding up does happen from time to time. It's just not a huge factor anyone needs to worry about and it's not organized.



So will our mysterious friend have to pay the $100 restocking fee per sim? And how can the sims be up already again given this quote from the auction FAQ? Shouldn't it have stayed off the market for 30 days?

Hard to say. Regardless, some of the sims won by him, and by somebody else who won 3 auctions in one night and only paid for one of them were auctioned off again yesterday.

It is also the case that some of the FAQs do not match what actually happens.

No bids get high because people will pay anything for a sim which is silly so they bid and bid and bid as they can't control themselves which is also silly. Its the "i dont know when to stop and I want to win so bad I will do anything problem that is the issue" and the "its okay I can sell to some stupid buyers at any price so I will offload my inability to STOP bidding onto buyers"

however the buyers are usually flippers and other land dealers and not end users to its not that huge an issue its like the stock market and lindex most people are there to buy and sell and buy and sell the land is no different. What is happening though is that due to this buy sell game people actually WANTING to buy land to keep and use can't get it for a reasonable price and many are priced out of the market and move onto private sims.

Ultimately those that buy sims for the purpose of reselling them off the auction block are IN FACT responsible for the prices being charged when and if people learn to control their urges a bit (which I doubt they will as this is the fun part of the game for them and i emphasize the word GAME) then and only then will prices become reasonable unless of course these guys start to sell at a loss.

Sorry its not due to supply and demand in the normal fashion its due to people who want to buy land to sell, but not buy land to sell to end users who will develop the land just sell the land and the buyers will be the usual folk with scanners and bots who snap is up and put the price up again very little land is bought and actually kept for use by end users anyone going to those sims can see that with their own two eyes so the auction price is almost irrelevant at this point because people are leaving the end user out of the equation

Anyone who wants to live on land goes to an estate now and that is pretty much the sad truth of it. Anyone who wants to profit from land sales will buy that land for that reason and no other reason.

happy Simdex because that is what its turned into and nothing more pretty much with possibly a rare exception and then we see the angry posters on the forums when they found out they got burnt!

Also anyone who doesn't think bidding up doesn't occur is either a fool or has not played this game for very long sorry to burst your bubble its quite common and happens

I totally don't buy this theory that people are bidding on sims just to push prices up. Do you know what bidding on one sim, or 20 sims does to mainland prices? Nothing. It pushes up the price of that sim alone. It has no greater repurcussion on the entire market. I guess the biggest private island owner in SL has about 6 or 700 sims. That is nowhere near the sort of capital you'd need to shift the mainland market. Hell, that's just a couple of weeks worth of sims. No-one is going to be stupid enough to try to move a market like that. In fact it's flat out impossible.

If I bought every sim that came on sale for a month and held it I'd have spent somewhere around USD1,680,000 and I'd still be no closer to pushing up the market because there's tons and tons more land on the market that isn't even in auctions.

Face facts, unless you are prepared to lose USD100k a month then you can't even dream of pushing prices any higher than supply and demand wants them to be. No-one can stand up to the rate that LL is releasing sims not now and probably not even back when they were releasing 4 a day.

The bots can speak and post on the forums now! Oh no!

Except certain large estate owners have in the past received prior warning about things like price increases and supply problems.

As usual, I barely understand a word you said, except for the insult at the end. I will say this has nothing to do with uncontrollable urges. People who bid here are very much in control. Also, the law of supply and demand does not distinguish between a land baron and an end user. A buyer is a buyer. No one who buys a sim to resell would be buying it unless there was another buyer waiting for him or her to split and relist it.

All what's old is new again.

Insider info or not, here's some free advice. Take it for what it's worth.

Anyone who is making a quick no-value-added buck at the expense of the userbase or the Company, is gonna lose out long term. No business tolerates that for long.



People *do* try to manipulate markets here - but rarely do they (or can they) do it with raw economic power.

Nor do they have to. One good market panic, maybe even one forum post and that's all you need!

So anyone with a cool head at all times will do pretty well; everyone else can lose a lot of money overnight. Something to think about.

that's fine dont read it as always its optional ....

That's my usual philosophy towards your lengthy, content-free rants.