Looking for a website that sells designer handbags, I have discovered this auction website. I must admit, it immediately caught my eye! Genuine products, low winning prices, free shipping, what else could one wish for? I joined, played with it in the course of about half an hour, but gave up.

Here’s how MaxLoren.com works:

• To bid you have to buy bids (haven’t seen this practiced anywhere else, but this is the key to the idea)
• Each bid costs you $0.60 and you can buy them in batches of 40, 70, 140, 280, etc (interestingly enough, unlike at Chuck E Cheese, you get no wholesale discount regardless of how many bids you buy)
• The auction prices go up only in increments of $0.02 (i.e. you cannot bid $10, but should either bid 500 times in a row, or wait until someone else bids it up to the $10, and then chime in; either way, it certainly keeps you busy)
• Every time someone bids within 10 seconds before the end of the auction, the auction extends by 10 seconds
• Starting prices are always really low, and shipping is always free

I started bidding on this item 9 seconds before the initially posted auction end time, and my winning  was $1.54. At the time of this post (over 4.5 hours after I’ve quit) someone is already bidding $29.48 on it, and the price continues growing.

But let’s suppose someone did buy this $395.00 designer handbag at the $29.48. How much would Max Loren actually get for this “lowest price” item? Since each bid costs bidders $0.60 + $0.02, we want to divide the final selling cost of the item by $0.02, and then multiply the result by $0.62. Let’s do it:

Wow!! Call it cruel or ingenious, but this is definitely some business model!