I was reading some of their comments on other sites (facebook, other forums) and it seems like they purchase the snakes from top quality breeders and then sell them on their website. My assumption is that the model allows them to make a decent profit off the snake.
Butter: market value of $350
She is currently at $2.08
Lowest rate per bid seems to be $0.55, and highest rate per bid seems to be $0.90 (correct me if I'm wrong) so I'm going to average $0.72 per bid.
There have currently been 208 bids on this butter female if my average calculations are correct. This means that they have to sell her at $4.86 minimum to break even. Everything after is profit.
Let's pretend they purchase a snake from NERD at $1,500.
They need to have 2,083 (average) bids on the NERD snake for them to break even. The snake would sell at $20.83 at this break even point. Everything after is profit.
Please correct my math if I'm wrong, it's late.
Interesting business model. It might work for some people. I would be wary that the person winning the snakes at the end is not a legitimate customer (like you or me) but a friend or bot. But I guess if we see that people from BP.net or Fauna or something are winning the snakes and singing the praises of the site, my opinion might change. I know some of the bigger penny auction sites have auto-bids and shillers that increase the price or never allow a real customer to get the product.
This is not to say that ballbids.com is going to do the same thing, but that it's a complaint many have against penny auctions. As time goes on, we'll see who is getting the snakes and that'll verify legitimacy![]()