What did you pay in auction for your sim?

I know I am really asking for it in asking this question so please read before you post.

• Why am I asking this and what am I going to with the information?

Despite a number of comments to the Lindens, SL Key Metrics have not been consistent enough, back in history enough or granular enough to answer certain questions about economic trends in Second Life.

• The central question and sub questions are:

What is the average cost of a mainland sim in auction?
What was the average cost of a mainland sim in auction in the past?
What is the trend in mainland sim's, up, down or up and down?
What affects their cost? Demand, availability, type, population growth?

This is a simple fact finding mission, please refrain from adding opinions here if you can. If you purchased a sim in auction then thats the data of core interest. There is no ulterior motives here other than answering these questions.

I founded the IRSO group (Island Region Sim Owners) for the purpose of exchanging support and information about islands. I started life on the mainland and although I am an island owner now, still love the mainland and all its diverse cultural mayhem. I am planning to aggregate this information and run sum analysis on it and post it for the general SL public in about a month.

I realize that for many this is sensitive information. I am not going to share the names of any respondents at any time, thats irrelevant to the study. If you do not want to post it in public, send me a private message or IM me in-world. You can post more than once if you have purchased more than one sim at auction over time. The more he merrier.

The needed facts:

Price at close of auction
Date at close of auction
Sim name
Square meters

...and if you can remember
The number of bids

Again I will make this available in about 30 to 45 days.

Thanks to all who help, Loydin Tripp

I dont think thats something most mainland sim owners would like to share in a pubic forum. you could check the closed auction pages.

As note - it seems prices are pretty steady and still the cost to purchase at auction is in excess of the current market value of land these days.

Loydin, you can actually find all of this infomation at Melina Loonie's SL Auction Stastics page:
http://cosyhome.org/cgi-bin/auc_statistics/auction-stats.html

Somewhere on that list you'll find my one mainland sim purchase:
Erzulie PG 60,000 sqm Wildefire Walcott $ 2,672 2007-04-05 20:19:06

Note that there's one resident listed there who's paid an astounding total of $307,104 USD on mainland auctions alone. And I've never heard of him/her before.

Avacea, I realize that many would not want to post in public, thus the the 2 different ways to post in private to me, IM in-world and the private message system here in the forums.

Also there are a lot of people who don't care, not everyone is buying a sim in auction for the purpose to resell.

"As note - it seems prices are pretty steady and still the cost to purchase at auction is in excess of the current market value of land these days."

Well steady is in the eye of the beholder and your sampling range, some early information I will share here...

Sample 1: 5 sims, close date range: 9/2 - 9/8 2006

Avg. Sim Price: $ 1,085.80
Avg. Sq. Meters: 64,566
Avg. Dollars per meter: $ 0.01682446
Avg. Lindens per meter: L$ 4.7124

Avg. Linden Value: L$ 280.0653
Avg. Number of Bids: 15.8

Sample 2: 10 sims, close date range: 6/30 - 7/3 2007

Avg. Sim Price: $ 2,748.70
Avg. Sq. Meters: 65,086
Avg. Dollars per meter: $ 0.04220942
Avg. Lindens per meter: L$ 11.3571

Avg. Linden Value: L$ 269.0655
Avg. Number of Bids: 36.4

I like letting numbers speak to me, they tell stories. The more you have, the louder and more clearly they speak to you. I am not sure where you get your opinion about value and I do not disagree, you may well be right. But it is clear that if you bought sim land in the past and held on to it for these 10 months, you may have doubled your money on a resale. But in reality sim land in auction and undeveloped resale is a "pump and dump" market.

The other two conclusions you may draw is that slowly but surely the Linden has glacially held and very slightly, by the chin hair of a fly, gained value.

Finally, as you can see from the number of bids average, it has gotten far more competitive to own a mainland sim from auction, bids have increased by a factor of almost 2.25.

Many make the fatal mistake in Second Life to regard the land market here in the manner that the real world land market works. In that market land will almost always (but not always) increase in value as their is a fixed amount of resource and an ever growing demand. But in Second Life the Lindens are always producing more land so this economic model is more similar in behavior to a supply & demand model. Can the Lindens produce enough to keep up with demand? It also means that if they wish too, they can manipulate the market by decreasing the amount of land available. But this does not always make as much sense as some would think because it is also important to them to expand their business and the population of Second Life.

The purpose of getting these numbers is to separate fact from fiction and document from conspiracy theory.

Wildefire, greetings fellow IRSOnite!

Thank you, thank you to the 10th power, pure gold!

But I may be missing something is there a past list? I only saw a list for recent, have those, and for highest bidders and owners.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Looks like I still need that info.

"Note that there's one resident listed there who's paid an astounding total of $307,104 USD on mainland auctions alone. And I've never heard of him/her before."

Some of those names are alts for the big resellers, like Chung. A trick to know that is to go instantly to Sl after you see an auction close, to that sim, and see who is selling it.

Well it lists the details of nearly every auction since late 2006 when she began collecting data- did you not see the list that comprises the bottom 2/3 of the page? Closing details of 1278 auctions since data collection began all right there. The only thing you were asking for that it doesn't list is total number of bids.

If you want auction results previous to December 06 though, well... I wish you luck!

Sorry, Wildfire, failed to go below the scroll. Thanks again.

That is indeed dense. I would say to anyone viewing this request that your business is very public already, so my request seems tame and fairly benign.

Anyone reading this, although that website is really good, if anyone has any info before 2007 please let me know, and the bid number would be great for anything in 2007

Thanks again.