Complicity

We’re watching a piece on eBay. The price is pretty high already – we haven’t bid and there’s half an hour to go.

“Will you bid?” I asked. “I ought not to,” he replied. “But will you?” “That’s why I said ‘ought’ not to,” he said with a grin.

“We’re two of a kind,” I said.

12 comments on “Complicity

  1. Z

    Thanks, D. We didn’t bid in the end – it went past the amount we were going to put in, with 40 secs to go, so we had our nice butternut squash soup and a glass of rosé wine instead, and we’re quite cheerful.

    Reply
  2. martina

    E-bay is wonderful. A friend is listing stuff on it for me. Hard not to sit at the computer and check the bids every hour or so!

    Reply
  3. Dandelion

    Very sensible. And it always feels very good to know that you’ve saved yourself whatever the winning bid was.

    Even when I lose an auction, I still feel smug that I pushed the price up for whoever did win.

    Reply
  4. Z

    Jen, you’re home? You’re home! I’ve missed you too, I will go and read you RIGHT NOW.

    At least you missed me bewildering everyone with my minute description of How To Grow Vegetables!

    Soup for supper tonight, BTW…of course!

    Reply
  5. martina

    pfffft. Z I can’t check every 10 minutes during workday-the bosses just don’t understand! Ahh.. the underbidder eggs the winning bidder into bidding the highest amount-right? Sort of like double triple dare you kid’s trick.

    Reply
  6. Z

    Sorry, I didn’t realise underbidder isn’t a well-known word. Martina is right, except that it sounds as if the underbidder doesn’t actually want the item and is just pushing the price up!

    The underbidder is the person who bids but doesn’t succeed in buying the item, because he is outbid by the buyer.

    Of course, what an auctioneer really likes is two or more people who are desperate to buy the rare and lovely item he has for sale, because neither of them wants to go home empty-handed and they just keep on bidding.

    Martina, your bosses just don’t understand you.

    Reply
  7. Dandelion

    Thanks you two.

    I should have been able to figure it out, because I do know what “under” means, and I know what “bidder” means, but I think I just wasn’t sure what the “under” was referring to – in this case, it means the final buyer (who prior to the auction end, is also a bidder) I thought it might refer to the price, or the reserve.

    And yes, I like to do it just to push the price up. I have strategies for working out people’s high bids on ebay, and then pushing them up to it. It’s a bit dog-in-the-manger, I know, but it’s fun.

    Reply

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