Lucky Hammer's European Break closing tonight

Yesterday, an email went out to Lucky Hammer members informing them that the european break is closing tonight.

Readers of this blog may be interested in a couple of tips that were included on the email. The first tip is that there's a buy one get one free offer on the auction. The second tip is perhaps more interesting.

At 5pm, when the email was sent, the lowest unique bid was still less than £1. This supports the definite trend that prizes on Lucky Hammer are going very cheaply - it's a new site so the number of bids on each auction are pretty low.

In the case of the European Break it once again looks like someone's going to get a cracking deal - even in terms of reverse auction sites.

A Plea

Dear readers

If anyone sees any competitions to win a year's supply of petrol please, please, please let me know. I don't know how many more price increases I can take! It seems that most places near me are now selling diesel for over £1.30 a litre.

Please find me a competition - it would mean so much to me!

Yours in Hope

Lucky Hammer Blog Editor

Has Lucky Hammer provided the cheapest PS3 ever?

While we’re waiting for the Wii and iPod touch auctions to finish on Lucky Hammer and Bidjam we can look at a previous bid where the two reverse auction sites had the same product on offer.

Recently, both sites auctioned a PS3. Bidjam is currently advertising on their front page that they sold a PS3 for £1.95. This is a great deal for someone as if you want to buy a PS3 at the moment you have to spend around £300 (there are some good PS3 deals here)!

The final price of the Lucky Hammer auction was a bit harder to find. However, when we did find it, we were shocked - the lowest unique bid was 24p!

24p for a PS3 – this time last year people were paying over £400 – the Lucky Hammer winner has effectively had a 99.4% discount on this price!

So here’s a challenge: if anyone knows a cheaper way that someone has got a PS3, post a comment on this blog!

Battle of the Auctions

At the moment two of the UK's biggest reverse auction sites are going head to head. Lucky Hammer and BidJam both have current auctions for an iPod Touch and a Nintendo Wii.

The question is: whose auctions will finish lowest?

The luckyhammer bloggers will keep an eye on activity and let you know.

At Dixons the price for the iPod is £174.54 and the price of a Wii is £269.99 (with three games).

Let's see how much our winning reverse auctioneers save on these prices!

More reverse auction sites

In a quiet moment of reflection earlier I was searching the internet for more reverse auction related fun. I found it, staring so hard at me in the face that I can't believe I've missed it before. BidLowest2Win has plenty of prizes listed and details of auctions coming soon.

There are certain parts of the site that look like they have errors as there is a good splattering of the word "forbidden" around but it may be worth you reverse auctioneers checking it out.

Don't like reverse auctions? What else is there?

Imagine a world without Reverse Auctions. I know it's scary, but a few years ago this world did actually exist. What on earth did people do???

The lack of reverse auctions could well explain the cause of the baby boomers of the 80s (who knows where a quiet night in without a reverse auction might lead?) or the proliferation of Christmas jumpers in the early 90s or even the disasterous music produced by bands such as Freddy and the dreamers.

But if only people had been blessed with more imagination there's so much more they could have done - stuff that would have resulted in winning prizes rather than having to wear a terrible jumper that someone's knitted for you! (have a look at these great examples of Christmas jumpers)

Nowadays, if reverse auction sites such as Lucky Hammer didn't exist there would be other activities available that would do away with the need to start knitting or in the case of Freddy and the Dreamers, producing terrible music.

Check the following sites for great fun while browsing the internet!

B3ta - really funny stuff added every day!
Home Star Runner - listen to Strongbad's amazing emails!
InstantWin4Now - loads of prizes, completely free and instant gratification!
The Sun - News, pictures and competitions!

Is there a skill to reverse auctions?

Many people will be surprised to hear that experienced "reverse auctioneers" think that there's an element of skill to getting the prize you're after.

Just as people come across experienced bidders in auctions for antique furniture, some people feel the same about online auctions!

For example, think about this:

"I'm not bidding a penny 'cos everyone will!"

So does this mean that nobody will bid 1p? Usually, someone does but what is often the case is that people will jump from 1p to 12p or 64p or something higher. The numbers that often get missed or receive very low bid numbers are from 1p - 10p so it's often worth thinking about putting some bids in this area to make sure you don't miss out on the obvious deals! You'd be surprised what numbers are left over!

As if to prove this point, on Lucky Hammer recently a crate of wine was won for 2p and a Plasma TV was won for 6p!!!

Perhaps it's a game of nerve more than a game of skill...

Though, if you do believe in the skill element, there's more information here.