Bluescooter, it's VERY bad form to mention a competing website on our hosts forum! Cbid gives us this place to interact and compare tastes and trade and generally cut-up over politics, religeon, or whatever, and all the ask is that we keep it clean, and don't use their bandwidth or server space to advertise their competitors.

God bless those overbidders.

Sorry CW....I wasn't thinking about this being a sponsored site when I posted....It won't happen again

Did someone say chuckle????

PT 🙂

holy moly batman.......

If you can buy it cheaper on CI than what your bid is here, Then You Have Overbid! Therefore we have overbidders, Its that simple.

John L

Slim wrote: " I've talked several times over the years with Keith and Gonz ... and there are more times than not that they barely break even on the lots that are won here (many times even losing money on individual wins), and it's only the sheer volume of the daily offerings that keep this auction site alive."

That comment reminds me of the old story of the shirt manufacturer who says he sells his shirts so cheaply that he loses money on every shirt he sells, but makes it up on volume.

I think Keith is a retailing genius. At 31-years-old, to have grown a business as large as he has, he hasn't sold many cigars at a loss.

Here's a URL to a very informative article:

http://www.dailyitem.com/archive/2004/0405/biz/stories/05biz.htm 

Good article. Tells a good story. You're right...they can't be operating at "too" much of a loss here.

The other thing it points out, though, is the massive mark up that other retailers take.

CI and Cbid make it hard to buy at a retailer.

Every one here is still missing the point. CBID is another site from CI. They still sell Cigars at retail and make money doing it. The volume on this site helps them keep their costs down from there suppliers.

Just my $0.02

Mike

PS I love this site......

Martin2277 hit the nail partially on the head. I also suspect that many of the 5 pack name brand cigars that are purchased here were purchased in bundles from the manufacturer & never saw a box in their life.

Don't take this wrong. I don't have a problem with this. It would drive down costs & might be the perfect way for some manufacturers to unload over-runs.

All auctions have over bidders. The thing about over bidding is that it breads more of the same items being sold for auction. Eventually, an equalibrium is reached. If they make 200% MU on one auction, they'll have two the next time and then three and so on until the maximum profit can be reached (also the optimum volume). It's all a matter of statistics, there is going to be a few 'outlyers' in there and those are the auctions that you can get a good deal on. If your in a hurry, your going to pay more. If you can wait, your going to get a deal.

jamie.....you got that right......