The fact that seller fees on GB and AA are not front-loaded, as BuckeyeSam has noted, fully explains the perpetual bandwidth for trapdoor spiders. UM, your intellectualization reveals that you understand auctions, as do most of us who've been to a desperation farm auction where the attendance did not reach critical mass on a rainy February Saturday. Sitting in front of a monitor sorting thru trash is a very comfortable, sedentary avocation. The fleas come with the dog and some of the dogs are dogs. You can scan the consignment racks, play the armchair internet game, get off the porch and run with the big boys to the sealed bid auctions, walk the gun shows, buy from your neighbor down the street. It's only used guns, dead men's guns, jewels in the rubbish of commerce. I don't expect folks to give me things because they're tired of them; I don't expect them or encourage them to give me things for a song because they're desperate (altho I know there are buyers who make a practise of nosing out the economic cripples and bragging about it).
For every carnivorous buyer, there's a carnivorous seller of course. However, a large portion of the clientele of AA and GB are casual or occasional sellers. You can take a peek at "seller's other auctions" and get a good idea of what he's about, what he's got invested, whether's he's a cull & discard collector, an ordinary Joe whose pre-occupations have changed, a shop with an oddball outside his area of expertise that he wants to move along. Often, the ad copy can help you spot the cranks. For instance, I don't mind a few sugggestions in the advert about how the seller conducts business but I run from flamboyant multi-paragraph statements of "my way or the highway" policies. Sucker pricing is pretty obvious to those who make an effort to study the "water seeks its level" pricing of guns WHICH HAVE SOLD. I don't want a 1910 "pin" SW for 39C when I can (and have) found one in better condition for 5C. I'm not a high stakes player but, even in my case, the game is about how to get a lot of gun for say another buck and a half rather than how to get a piece of junk for a buck and a half less. I will say that the best auctions for me are the "game called for lack of interest" where I put up the starting bid and get the gun.
jack
