One of the most interesting and newest categories on eBay are Mystery Auctions. There are two basic kinds of mystery auctions. One of them is what I feel is more suitable for the name, and the other one is not so much, but still a lot of fun. The first one is an actual auction setting. The other one is usually some kind of envelope being sold at a fixed price.

The basic definition of a Mystery Auction is just an auction where you don’t know exactly what you are going to get. So what is the sense in taking part in that? Well, you don’t know exactly what you are going to get but you do know that you have a chance to get something of a lot greater value then what you are getting. In a way it’s much like a raffle. You are paying for a chance to win something of greater value, but there is also a chance you may lose.

While Mystery Auctions can be fun, they can also be a pretty big rip off. A lot of the mystery auctions you will find on eBay are set up as follows. The seller will state that they are selling envelopes. They may have something like 500 envelopes for five dollars each. Each envelope will have something in it. If could be fifty cents, or it could be a new plasma TV. Well, the question a lot of people are asking is “how do I know if they are really giving away what they say they are?” Well in most cases you don’t. You just have to ask yourself if it’s worth the risk. There are many legitimate good mystery auctions out there that can be a lot of fun.

A friend of mine and I have started an experiment type deal on eBay involving Mystery Auctions. We are pretty sure that we have came up with a strategy of making a mystery auction scam proof, well we know we did the hard part is just to prove it. I will be following up with the details. So far, we have developed an eBay account under his name (since he didn’t have an eBay account before now and I did). That way we could start fresh and have our account be dedicated to mystery auctions. We have opened an eBay store that is also dedicated to mystery auctions. Our goal is to have a store filled with eBay Mystery Auctions that are all scam proof. That way, we may be able to scrape a decent profit out of it, while everyone else can enjoy mystery auctions that are legitimate and proved to be scam proof. We will soon have a Blog devoted to this experiment. See the upcoming part two of this article or email for details.