Gunbidder.com???

[bonzaiberger]

Does anybody know if this is real or a scam?

 

[williamnewman1]

never heard of it , which lends towards scam , but no personal experience either way, good luck

 

[wabash]

bidgunner.com is probably the site you mean. It is a gun auction site with an unusual bidding system.

gunbidder.com is a site that shows ebay auctions in some outdoor gear categories.

 

[WWalker]

On Buds guns it says that they are the exclusive firearms supplier of bidgunner.com

 

[Avec]

Bidgunner.com is a simple penny auction site such as quibids (sp?) You buy a block of bids up front and bid on items. If you do the math, the buyer usually gets a pretty good deal, the losers get nothing and the seller brings in big cash. The auctions begin with an ending time, but that time increases 10 seconds with each bid so a bidder cannot slide in with a quick bid as the clock reaches zero.

Warning - Math:
Each bid costs $.65. If a $500 pistol is being sold and bidding starts and goes to $40. That is 4000 bids (each bid increases auction by one cent, no exceptions) @ $.65 per bid is a total of $2600 in revenue for a $500 pistol.

I watched bidgunner for quite a while to see if I could figure out a pattern or some logic - there is none. An off-brand pistol could go for $10 on time, then $40 the next and $25 the next. I tried and tried to figure it out, and realized that it is chaos. You can get a good deal, but you have to be really luck and committed. If you decide you want that Glock or whatever, you need to be ready to bid and bid until everyone else tires, and no one decides to jump in at the last second.

As for their business, I have never won an auction to have something shipped to me, but I believe that the site is owned and operated by Buds Guns, so the reliability of Buds would apply to bidgunner.

 

[wabash]

if the last bid costs as much as the first bid, why would anyone bid early?

are there many bids in the last minute?

 

[pudly]

I had multiple reasons to be concerned. Avec is correct about the monetary aspect. Here is an analysis I wrote a while ago that talks about that as well as serious security deficiencies in their web site: https://www.indianagunowners.com/forums/online_merchants/218777-any_info_on_auction_site_bidgunnner.html#post3129234

 

[Avec]

if the last bid costs as much as the first bid, why would anyone bid early?

are there many bids in the last minute?

In order to bid, you must buy a pack of bids. The best value comes out to
$.65 per bid. There are times when people have obviously thought "this gun will go to at least $40 or whatever, so i will check back. The result is auctions like this: http://www.bidgunner.com/auctions/5668 an AK style in 7.62 going for $5.13. Around Christmas I saw a Taurus .45 1911 go for $.57. yep, 57 cents. So, in this case, they made out like a bandit by bidding early.

One thing they do that makes it difficult to follow patterns is that you can only see the last 10 bids, so you cannot see how many bids a particular bidder has made. I thought if I could track that, I would have a better idea of when they might drop out (people put limits on themselves, and I thought if i can see if bidder x is approaching a logical limit like 100 bids, they might drop out) I even started righting a program that would pull the information from the webpages java script, screenscrape it and compile it in a database. I decided that I could not get it to output useable information quick enough to actually be used.

The biggest issue with bidding is that say you think a gun will go for $50, so you want to start bidding at $48 (there is a utility that will allow you to automatically start bidding at a predetermined amount and place x number of bids for you) If you have guessed wrong, and it goes for $45, then you never bid. If it goes to $55, you will probably run out of bids before it gets there. Remember, each bid only increases the selling price by 1 penny. If you and another bidder are going against each other, and each commit 100 bids, that is only enough to increase the selling price by $2.00

It is very interesting, and I check back to see what they are selling, but am not going to bid anymore. I actually saw one Sig assault rifle cost the winning bidder significantly more than retail. The selling price ended up being around $300, but the winning bidder spent $1200 on bids. I think the MSRP at the time was $1100. The site obviously made a killing on that. They sold a $1100 gun for $19,500. Not a bad deal for them.

 

[LarryC]

I'm an old guy and learned a few things in my life. "If it sounds too good to be true it probably is" (actually should be it really is). Second thing is "There's one born every minute". When I first heard of Quibids, I thought - no one is going to put any item worth $1,000 on a site that sells it for $75 unless it is a scam and they receive $1000 some way. After I looked it over it looks more like a raffle where they are "giving away" a $1000 item after selling $5000 worth of tickets. Yeah the "winner" did not pay much for the item, but the rest of the 4,999 people paid a buck apiece for nothing. (The lottery has better odds).

 

[KW730]

I'm an old guy and learned a few things in my life. "If it sounds too good to be true it probably is" (actually should be it really is). Second thing is "There's one born every minute". When I first heard of Quibids, I thought - no one is going to put any item worth $1,000 on a site that sells it for $75 unless it is a scam and they receive $1000 some way. After I looked it over it looks more like a raffle where they are "giving away" a $1000 item after selling $5000 worth of tickets. Yeah the "winner" did not pay much for the item, but the rest of the 4,999 people paid a buck apiece for nothing. (The lottery has better odds).

It's not a scam. You are not being deceived in any way. In order to bid you have to purchase them, when you purchase them they tell you how many you are getting and for what price. The way it works is clearly outlined and there is nothing "scam" about it.

Tremendous savings are passed along to buyers with these types of auctions, and the sellers make a killing. The majority of the time you aren't going to get a good deal, but that is made very clear to you before you begin bidding.

 

[TWS]

I just glanced at it, sure looked confusing to me.

 

[Ectoman86]

Glad I'm not the only one a little skeptical about this, but with the "deals" that keep popping up...I may keep an eye on it going forward

 

[Bobby]

Bidgunner is a penny gun auction site that has become a partner of Bud's Gun Shop out of Kentucky. I used to have a wish list of items that I wanted from Bud's Guns but I am struggling about it right now. In this day of sky-high gun prices, a penny gun auction site is the ultimate insult to me and I am disappointed that Bud's stooped to this level.

These penny auctions are attractive to us(i.e. the buyers) because guns are usually selling for much less than either their MSRP or their "street" price. Just this morning, Bidgunner.com was bragging about how a Sig Sauer P220 Carry sold for $200. WHAT a deal right? Well, the dirty little secret is that each bid costs an average of $0.65 PER BID through that site. A gun that sells for $10 rakes in $650 for the auction site, a gun that sells for $100 rakes in $6500 for the site, and the Sig P220 Carry that sold for $200 raked in $13000.00 in bids!!!!

I am there sure that there are costs for doing business but that is a little over the top to me. Since Bud's Gun Shop is featuring this form of price-gouging on their website, I am a little disappointed in the company. I would feel like I am condoning this type of business practice if I shopped there but Bud's DOES have a fantastic selection and pricing. This is why I am so torn about it. Penny gun auctions are a legal but a nasty way to make money in my opinion.

 

[BGSguy]

I know this thread is a little old, but I figured I'd clear some air here:

For the record, BudsGunShop.com is does NOT run OR own OR manage Bidgunner.com. We are and will continue to be their sole firearms supplier and as such, we find it mutually beneficial to occasionally link their auctions (they're buying from us after all). They have their own customer service, their own channels of communication, and none are affiliated with BudsGunShop.com at all. Honestly, I don't even know the guy's name that owns it.

As for the auction system they use, it's legit. It's not for everyone, but it's legit. Would I do it? I don't know, depends on how you approach it, but I'm utterly impatient and would much rather just buy my gun outright knowing I'm going to make a purchase. I don't know if I'd say it's akin to gambling, but let's just say I'm not a gambling man regardless, though I've heard some pretty spectacular stories from winners. People seriously do win those guns for that cheap, they just have all the bids they need beforehand to win them.

 

[dbishop728]

I think I will avoid it after reading some of the replies here

 

[bthacker24]

Just like quinids it is not a scam but the people who run the site are making all the money. The comparrison to the lottery is a good one.

 

[JetGirl]

You have to be a real numbers guy to make it work for you.
One of our regular customers plays on there all the time and wins awesome stuff for $40 bucks or so (plus shipping). But he loves the numbers game and is a gambler by nature.
Works for some, not for all.