TAS has made the market less transparent

[John Ioannidis]

One benefit of TAS is that it provides data on what an acceptable market price is.

If a seller just has "Buy It Now" and they fail to sell, at least we know that that price was too high.

Recently (at least I only noticed it a couple of months ago) they added a "make an offer" feature, which, at the end of the sale, does not disclose the amount paid if the offer was accepted.

Case in point: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-9815A-Calcula...1349132519

The asking price of $750 was clearly ridiculous; 9815Ss with no defects have traditionally gone for a lot less, but there is no way of knowing what the price was.

I'm not an expert on auctions or what the theory behind setting various kinds of auctions is (despite having worked at Google!), but it seems to me that something is fishy with this new way of doing auctions.

Comments?