I stumbled across the Guns4Pennies website, which claims to be a penny auction, and watched the sale of a Kel-Tec RFB, which is still taking place:
https://www.guns4pennies.com/auctions/Kel-Tec-RFB-Hunter-24-9127It's currently at $70.87 cents.
Sounds like a sweet deal, right?
It might be. While the bids are recorded as a penny each, each bid costs the bidder $1. That's right, one American Dollar. So, if you want to be able to bid 500 "pennies" you have to pay the site $500 !!!
Timing may be everything.. I've been watching two bidders slug it out over that Kel-Tec. There are two types of bids: Full auto and semi-auto. "Chilly4Life" and "broncco", both on full auto, have been depleting their real dollars at the rate of $3 per minute. The way the auction software is set to run, they will continue until one of them runs out of money in their bid package. The bid is now at $71.03, but in terms of real dollars that means that so far a bunch of people have thrown away $7,103 for an $1,860 rifle. The actual winner may end up spending only $500, or, he may jump in right after Chilly4Life and Broncco both run each others money pool empty. So, for that lucky winner the rifle might cost him only $1, or the total value of his "bid package" if he doesn't bid on anything else.
Either way, like the casinos in Las Vegas, the "house" always wins. Just now "P97" jumped in at $71.15. So the house has already made over $5,200 selling an $1860 rifle. For the owner of the Guns4Pennies that web site is making more money, more easily, than a casino.
Except for the lucky winner, the real losers are the many people who bought "bid packages" and saw their package value disappear in exchange for nothing.
