I sell a lot and don't understand the mentality of tiny start bids. ..Good luck
Penny starts with no reserve draw the bidders in early, then other people see a whole pile of bids on an item and want in on the action. It's all psychological, plus people understand that it is worth at least the current bid because another guy is already willing to pay it.
Something listed for $1000 minimum bid is not going to be as attractive as something that is bid up to $999 with 40 bids on it. And the penny minimum item is definitely going to sell and be gone, whereas the $1000 minimum item with no bids might cause folks to wait and see and then forget. And the $1000 minimum can cause folks to wonder if it might only be worth $800.
And if you have the guts to start it at $1.00, you should be able to muster the courage to start it at a penny. That way, the people (and they are out there) who search for $0.01 starting bid auctions will see it (but they won't see it at $1.00 minimum). That is easy to search for from the Advanced search page:
One of the sites, maybe it was AuctionArms, used to have a one-button search for penny auctions. AuctionArms also used to put a penny symbol next to items in the search results that had penny starts and no reserve. Speaking of reserves, using one defeats the purpose of penny starts and ends up being a worse idea than a high starting bid. Buyers hate reserves so much that there is another Advanced search option to eliminate those ads from the results:
I usually do penny starts on popular items that I know people are searching for. I might not use it if I were selling an item that didn't have much of a following or something that was not very desirable. Most Rugers should do fine for a penny start.
