I think if the bids go very high straight away that can put off bidding sometimes, but by and large having early bids on an item encourages more bids.philcom55 wrote:On the other hand bidding early can sometimes discourage competition. I know it works with me if I'm not particularly bothered about the item in question.
In fact so much so that a while back I sometimes ran a thing in some of my auctions that I'd say if the eventual winner had only one physical bid (not including automatic bids) and their bid was in the first 3 days of the listing then I'd knock off 10% off the final sale price and give free P&P.
That was kind of fun and made people bid in the first few days which did push up prices.
How many times did I have to knock off the 10%?
Never.
People just weren't realistic about their absolute maximum bid.