Auction sites where you bid up a penny....

Read about them, and saw one in action yesterday.

For those of you unaware....

Imagine a webpage with an iphone, a wii, and a widescreen tv...

Price sits at £13.04, with 18 seconds to go.

If 18 seconds pass by without a bid, the last bidder gets it for the price.
However, each bid is incremental by one penny, costs one penny, and extends the 'auction' by 20 seconds.

Basically, you sit there for hours and hours watching this go up and up, until the futility of existance (or boredon, is that the same thing?) gets to you and you give up..

The end product is that 'you' 'get' the item for much less than the retail price. If you are umm... tenacious enough.

Or, you spend loads of individual pennies on nothing.

Of course, those unredeemed pennies is how the website earns their dosh.

(not putting links for the sites here, on purpose)

in short, gambling

yeah, it's funny they tried to operate this outside of the 'gambling' laws, trying to be alongside ebay, sort of thing.