But can you get it wholesale? A survey of Internet auction sites finds that some aren't such a deal

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, July, 1998 by Ed Henry

A Survey of Internet auction sites finds that some aren't such a deal.

Stand up and take a bow, Mr. X. The St. Louis man recently became the proud owner of a 203-ounce, imperial bottle of 1985 Groth Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, bought in an Internet auction for $4,163 (plus $50 for shipping). Yup, you heard it right--quite a lot for a six-liter bottle of wine. (It's to be a decoration for his basement wine cellar, he says.) Such a sale may be extraordinary, but it illustrates the growth of the bazaar in cyberspace. "It's like a big flea market. People will buy and sell anything," says Larry Schwartz, who runs the Auction Universe Web site.

The giant bottle of Groth Cabernet may have been a bargain for its buyer, who won't divulge his name. Says Michele Basso of Groth Vineyards & Winery, in Oakville, Cal.: "Our 1985 Reserve Cabernet is one of the few wines ever to get a 100 rating from Robert Parker Jr. in the Wine Advocate and would be approaching its peak about now." A similar-size Groth wine issued by the winery today costs $1,000.

But the Internet can be a seller's market, too. Mark Booker, a filmmaker from Montclair, N.J., recently auctioned a 1912 golf instruction book for $170. He had bought it at a flea market for $2. "Just a pack rat at heart," Booker says, he has made more than $15,000 so far this year based on his Internet auction activities. Christina Schnell put a Beanie Baby, Humphrey the Camel, up for sale and ended up $750 richer--money the 15-year-old from Portland, Me., spent on a spring vacation in Florida.

We looked at the major auction sites and found that some offer less than meets the eye.

COMPUTER AUCTIONS

By far the most common products found in Web auctions are computers and software, with other consumer-electronic gear running a close second. Several sites exist solely to auction computer equipment.

On these sites, several identical items are commonly offered for sale to the highest bidders. At those Web sites, you must enter your credit card number in order to bid. If you win, the cost of the merchandise is charged to your account.

Among the most popular of the sites emphasizing computers, according to Web 21, a ranking service, are the following:

* Onsale (www.onsale.com) auctions hundreds of desktop computers at a time, not to mention monitors, servers, moderns and software. Brand names for desktops include Acer, Compaq and Digital Equipment. We found it difficult to learn the current high bids and specifications of the merchandise and impossible to review the winning prices on items already sold. But you can't argue with the volume of goods on display.

* Online Auction Warehouse (www.aucfionwarehouse.com) serves primarily as an outlet for computer gear made by American Computer Enhancements, a Washington, D.C.-area company. Auctions occur Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On a recent Monday, three Pentium II 400-megahertz desktop computers with 128 megabytes of RAM and a gaggle of attachments (but no monitor or operating system) sold for as little as $1,719. We found equally cheap, comparable no-name computers advertised in the Washington Post.

On all these sites, the merchandise may be new, but it will most likely be closeouts or "behind the curve" technology that has been upgraded to perform better. Conclusion: It is possible to get good values, but steals are hard to find.

* Z Auction (www.zauction.com) is several steps down from Onsale in terms of the quantity of merchandise offered. As with Onsale, once the auction ends, winners are notified by e-mail, but the rest of us can't tell the winning prices.

GARAGE-SALE AUCTIONS

Of a whole different order are the auctions that involve individuals selling to other individuals. These are akin to huge garage sales and can focus on specific categories. And as with garage sales, when you're a buyer you had better know what the items are really worth, so that you don't fall victim to the "winner's curse"--paying more than you should. Auctions like eBay typically don't involve credit cards and depend on your arrangements with the seller. A check, however, allows you to stop payment if you are dissatisfied.

* eBay (www.ebay.com) is the biggest, able to brag recently that it had 425,675 items at auction in 503 categories, ranging from the familiar (19,621 Beanie Baby listings) to the utterly obscure (a packet of sugar from a Penn Central Railroad dining car). If anything, there's too much on eBay, forcing you to plow through endless minutiae to find the noteworthy. And its customer service is a big bust. Our registration somehow got eaten by the eBay dog and it took a week to get our password back (by then the packet of sugar was history).

* Auction Universe (www.auction-universe.com) has a fraction of eBay's auction inventory--1,215 Beanie Baby listings when we stopped by, for instance, and many categories with no listings at all. This may work to a buyer's advantage because an item you desire may attract fewer competing bids.