I’ve explained this about half a dozen times before and in fact it’s answered right in the auction’s Q&A section: it says “no reserve” because they change the structure of the auction and eBay doesn’t allow you to change the description of an active auction. No conspiracy there.

You can call “I am Hungry” worthless until the cows come home, but the developers of “I am Hungry” are now $20k richer. The reality of the situation won’t change no matter how annoyed you are that such a “worthless” app got that kind of money.

You’ve now gone from “no reserve” to “definitely a $5k reserve” to “maybe there was a reserve, maybe there wasn’t.” The reason you can’t pin down a position is because you have no facts to back up your argument. All evidence points to the simplest conclusion: The “I am Hungry” auction had a reserve, as the Q&A section clearly says, and people were out-bidding themselves in order to suss out the reserve price.

2) The market is the final determiner of valuation. They “I am Hungry” guys got $20k, the fact that you think it’s only worth $50 doesn’t change that. The buyers obviously thought they were getting a deal.

3) We didn’t make anything off this sale. We contacted Dan after he originally posted the auction to let him know that if he restructured it he could make much more than he would otherwise.

5) Ask Dan if you want the reserve price, don’t just speculate. You don’t know what it was and the information is not available publicly.

Are you kiddin’ me? At $50, they would be gettin’ more than the “I am Hungry” app is worth.

3) We advised them on how to restructure the deal (a refund for developer time spent and payment to come in installments) in the hopes that it would increase the price.

Gee, how brilliant, I guess this is why “consultants” make the big bucks?!
And Lee doesn’t “write” overly long posts, he “copies and pastes” his overly long posts.
5) People outbid themselves in an attempt to just barely surpass the now-hidden reserve price.
“Just barely”?! Since when is bidding $20K, when the reserve is $5K, “just barely surpassing?!

I’m Jesse, the CTO and creator of Adonomics. Lee has a tendency to write overly long comments, so I’ll simplify the timeline for you:

1) The original auction was created with no reserve and was hovering around $1.5k-$1.6k
2) After talking with us as Adonomics the developers of “I am Hungry” realized they would be underselling if they kept it at this price.
3) We advised them on how to restructure the deal (a refund for developer time spent and payment to come in installments) in the hopes that it would increase the price.
4) In addition, Dan et al. added a reserve price to the auction. eBay doesn’t let you change the description so the auction still said still said “no reserve.”
5) People outbid themselves in an attempt to just barely surpass the now-hidden reserve price.
6) The combination of (3) and (4) led to a winning auction of just over $20k.

Everything is legit.