Hi all, I've just placed my wife's car on e-bay with a reserve, and I've had lots of messages from potential buyers asking what the reserve is....

Is there any problem or adverse issue if I was to disclose this reserve price, or is it best to leave it hidden?

Jay

I think the point of having a low starting price and a hidden reserve is to encourage early competitive bidding fever between potential winners.

If you tell them the reserve you might just as well have the starting price at the same level which has the effect of discouraging competitive early bidding fever.

The ultimate use of "reserve" would be to put a highly desirable item up for sale with a rediculous high reserve to simply find out what it is worth to the highest bidder(s).

If it transpires that the highest bidder has hit an acceptable selling price, then when it fails (as it must) to reach the reserve, it is then possible to re-post the item into an auction with the reserve set to your "acceptable " price when it should sell OK second time around.

There are probably rules that prevent this but - its a way of not allowing it to go for a song when you dont know what it could fetch.