Part II Searching and Bidding on Auctions (My Personal Secrets)
My wife hates it when I go grocery shopping. She might send me out for milk and toenail clippers and I come back with $500 worth of stuff. She asks me how I could ever spend that much and I show her the receipt where I saved $234.78, a 33% savings! That's what I think is important - savings, not substance. It's not my fault, though. In the line at the cash register they tempt me with special sales. I have to do something while I wait... so I shop! When I got to the register on that particular day, all I had was the milk, toenail clippers, animal crackers, and a side of beef. It also wasn't my fault they had a "two for one" Maine Lobster sale going on. Then Joe the manager saw me, smiled, and called out my name (funny how he knows my name). "Do I have a deal for you. Not only are they two for one, but I get it from a good source that lobsters are going up next week by $8/pound. It sure is a good deal if you get them today." Do you know that if you lay the back seat of a Monte Carlo down, you can fit in a side of beef and 48 live lobsters!
I'm a little impulsive. I have found that you must know what you're looking for and how much you are willing to spend for it. It is so easy to get caught up in the auctions; especially if you get on at the last minute, when they are closing down. If you're like me, you hate to pass up a good bargain. You don't want to let it slip through your fingers.Then you submit the bid and you've bought the car seat covers for the '55 Bel Air that you don't have. My wife has a hard time understanding how I can buy things that are so impractical. I don't understand how I can't.
As you know, there are thousands of auctions out there. So how can you search all of them for that one item you want? I recommend Bidsmart. Bidsmart "scans online auction sites and determines the categorization of the products contained in these sites." Bidsmart is the new brain child of Thai Tran and Stephen Oskoui, students from Stanford University. Combine their frustrations of buying items through auctions with the need for a computer science project and Bidsmart is born (who says that universities are not solving the great mysteries of man). One of the great qualities about Bidsmart is that you can track an item with just one stop! No need to surf the auctions again (but then what's the point of living). Bidsmart makes auctions alot easier.
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