Gift cards are a popular auction on DealDash.com so they are not easy to win.
Let’s take a look at the $50 Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card up for auction right now (as of this writing). After the “No New Bidders” limit was reached, I counted the competitors. Guess how many players placed at least one bid to participate in this auction? I counted 126.
That means we each have only one chance out of 126 of winning this auction. If all of these players each put 50 bets into BidBuddy (the automated bidder), this auction would not close until it reached $63. During a “Free-to-the-Winner” special feature, players often continue bidding over the value of the gift card. Why? When we don’t have to pay a closing cost, all we have to count is the cost of the bids we are using.
Of course, not all 126 players are going to add more than one bid and seriously compete in this auction. Many players might count how many players are participating and give up before they start. However, the players who do decide to seriously compete will most likely use more than 50 bids.
Let’s do the math. If each of the 126 players bought a bid pack when they were on sale for 13 cents per bid, the maximum number of bids each player could place to break even would be 384. If the winner of this $50 gift card uses any more bids than that, it means that bidder actually lost more than he or she won. If the winner of this gift card uses fewer than 384 bids, it means that player won more than he or she lost.
Of course, our objective in playing on DealDash is to win more than we lose. Therefore, it most likely would be a complete waste of bids to place the bulk of our bids too early. With that many competitors, chances are very slim that the $50 gift card would close before it reaches at least $30.00. In fact, the $50 Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card just hit $30 and there are still six serious players bidding in the auction.
To save money on gift cards, smart players will only place bids when the auction is down to the last two or three players. The idea is to allow all of the other serious players to use up their maximum number of bids before you do. If you look to see how much this auction usually closes at, that might be the right time to join the auction with the bulk of your bids. However, keep in mind that whenever DealDash runs the “Free-to-the-Winner” auctions, the closing price usually goes up much higher.
Submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers