This was in 1994..Wolfston didn't invent JACK
Here is two facts
1:Online Auction
According to Internet historians, the Computer Museum in Boston hosted the Internet's first online auction in April 1994. The Museum is the world's first institution devoted to people and computers. For info send mail to: computer_info@tcm.org, with "Request" in subject line, and "Send help instructions" in the body of the message.
2:From: Choy Heng-Wah (hwchoy@zpuppy)
Subject: Re: Electronic Stamp Auction
View: Complete Thread (22 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: rec.collecting.stamps
Date: 1994-06-17 06:42:38 PST
In article <2ts483$2g2@taurus.fccc.edu>, C_Christensen@fccc.edu (Carl Christensen) writes:
>we'd have maybe 15 posts in a thread of bids, and there's always a
>bunch of posts that end up elsewhere that are bids so it would make
>going around r.c.s. a pain. I say go with an E-mail bid system, where
>the winning bid is one advance over the 2nd highest bid. Or, if
>people don't trust the seller, we'll just have to stick to the
>highest bid wins at the highest bid price.
Good point, we'll also have people flaming when they loose because the
seller's site lost some posts and never received some of the bids. I too
agree that bid-by-Email would be best, but would still vote for the "one
advance over the 2nd highest bid", since this is common practice, and
even if the seller is dishonest we'll at worst end up with the "highest
bid wins at the highest bid price."
What would be really nice would be a "bid-broker" software. It might
work something like this:
1. Interested bidders register their email address with the BidBroker.
2. A seller sends his description, reserve price, cut-off-date, etc to
the BidBroker.
3. The BidBroker assigns a lot number to the description, and forwards
it to the list of registered bidders.
4. On the cut-off-date, the BidBroker determines the winning bidder and
the winning price (realisation) and forwards this info to the seller
and the winning bidder. The seller and winning bidder communicate
directly to complete the transaction. The realisation price is
forwarded to all bidders who put in a bid.
To pay for the upkeep of such a system, the seller (and possibly the
purchaser) pays the operator/owner of the system a "commission" based on
percentage of realisation, or perhaps a flat handling charge per lot.
Perhaps someone like AOL might provide this as a service.
Choy Heng-Wah
Network Integration Services
Digital Equipment Corp (Asia Pacific)
Internet: hwchoy@zpovc.enet.dec.com
Timezone: GMT+08:00 |
