The auction ended with no bids.

I don't know of any escrow arrangement that does not involve depositing to an address.

Friedcat sent a module in a plywood box from Beijing to Minnesota for, I think, 180 Yuan.  The number 180 is handwritten on the mostly Chinese language EMS form in a box named "charge."

You may wish to place a 1 BTC payment to the auction address.

I have adjusted the end block, in order to bring the estimated end time near 11 PM GMT.
The new block is 278,004.

Yeah.  This only makes sense for the Batch #1, #2, #3 boards.
Those are the machines that have 3 modules, and have a spec of 285 MHz & 65 GH/s.  They are typically overclocked to about 350 MHz & 82 GH/s.

That is BTC 2.99 at the current exchange rate.  The calculator I quoted gives BTC 1.72882 before the electricity costs more than the mining proceeds.  My thoughts are that it is a good offer and it exists now.  Perhaps your Batch #2 would be a candidate for my auction.

Yes, that is a good question.  We all would like to have an answer.  This number depends on why you mine, what your heat, internet, security, and electricity cost, and whether you are paying interest on credit card or other debt.

To estimate this number, I used this calculator to estimate the total BTC earnings at my electric rate.


Offer it at my auction for 3 module units.  I will pay 1/4 of the successful amount for your 4th module.  My destination zip is 56267, to discuss shipping of the 4th module.
Is this a batch #1 or #2; or a batch #3 style module?  I am interested in any of them.

I have purchased a 2nd Avalon, and I am offering it at auction in order to gain an idea of the liquidation value of an Avalon.  If things go well, I will offer to liquidate your shares at that winning amount before midnight, December 31, less than 48 hours from now.

Please feel free to let me know what you think a minimum bid should be, for the entire 3 module Avalon, for you to want to sell out your shares.

To place an Avalon in this auction, please make a post with the following information.  

Bidder strategy hint:  If you want to buy an Avalon for BTC 0.7, place a bid even if no Avalon is available for that amount.  Prospective sellers can see the bids and offer their units based on your bid.

zip or postal code ";"  "BTC" minimum bid ";" url for helpful information, such as hash rate on eligius, or photographs.  The zip code helps bidders figure out how much shipping should be.  I received an Avalon this week, the label said 38.0 lbs, $37.00, from 66219 to 56267, USPS 3-day priority.
e.g.

56267; BTC 2.75; http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/1GLDyzXBWNpVYC63Jdy929HnfYJEQ3GHUp

You may change these details by re-posting them.  For example, you may wish to raise your minimum-bid if the auction conditions look favorable to you.  The last posting determines your priority.

It's the end of the year, and people may want to buy or sell their Avalons now.  I have posted a blockchain flea-market thread.  You can offer an avalon for sale, or make a bid on an avalon.

Edited 2014-03-29
This auction ends in mid April, at block 296352.  Bids included in or before block 296352 are valid.
The revived auction details start at post #24

--------
Edited 2014-01-19
This auction is active for January.
Auction ends 2014-01-31. The ending block will be confirmed near that time.  A rough estimate today is block 283156.

If you want your Avalon in this auction, post in this thread.

--------
I am willing to act as escrow, blockchain-auctioneer, and general organizer of an end-of-year Avalon flea market.

If you want to buy or sell before the end of 2013, this is the place to be.

Buyers:
Your funds will be at an address that I control.  The seller will know that you have committed, I will release the funds when the seller has proof of delivery.  I will make a final decision in the case of disputes.

Sellers:
This is a central location.  You can get high visibility in the busiest Avalon marketplace.  The funds are paid and I act as your escrow agent.  The network effect means that all Twitter or Facebook exposure helps each of you.

Commission:
I take 1% for my commission, regardless of where I send the funds.

Community:
I, and the Avalon community, need to know what an in-hand Avalon is worth.  For some people, this has important tax implications.  Also, it's just time for a flea market & all around shake-up.

Rules:
This is a multi-winner blockchain auction.  I have held previous auctions of this nature.  The rules will be similar to previous auctions, both single-winner and multi-winner.  This auction will add the capability of multiple sellers with different minimum bids.

Shipping:
That is a pesky detail, isn't it.  Winning buyer pays shipping as an extra expense.  I can't think of any other fair rule.

Schedule:
The auction is live now as a 1 seller, 1 winner auction.  The auction will end at about block 278075 278000.  This block number is subject to change as announced in this thread, to keep the ending time near 11 PM GMT 2013-12-31.

If you want to sell your Avalon in this auction, please post your interest here.  It will take me a couple of hours to write rules that can handle multiple-winners, multiple-sellers, each with their own minimum bid.  The official rules will be dense formal writing, and they will use this document as a starting point.

The situation is more complicated than I initially revealed.  I sold shares in the Batch #2 miner that I bought last February 18, and I have been making weekly payouts.  As the end of the year is approaching, and the value of the miner diminished, I wanted to offer my shareholders a reasonable buy-back offer this tax year.

To learn the value, I bought an identical miner last week for 2.359 BTC in a straight up purchase.  That miner is in my possession and hashing.  The eligius log shows that miner, mining before I bought it, the 2 day shipping interval, and the increase in mining as I flashed it with updated firmware.  I intended to sell this miner at auction to learn the current value of my Feb. 18 miner, while at the same time keeping everything "squeaky clean" as far as what I was selling.  I hoped to have a reasonable arm's length value that was derived in a transparent manner to take back to my shareholders.  This auction-derived information might also benefit the entire community of buyers & sellers in the Avalon ecosystem.

While I was willing to take some loss in order to learn this reasonable auction value, I do not believe that the shareholders on the Feb. 18 miner, nor the IRS, nor anyone else following this auction, will accept a 0.02 BTC bid as reasonable, and so I have cancelled the block 277700 auction and refunded the funds.


I closely follow one of the mining projections. I am sure that profit motive people would not bid more than about 75% of those projections, while people who want to mine unused coins, or perhaps alt coins, may be willing to bid above those projections.  The Avalon might be retrofitted with mining modules using the 55 nm (gen 2) Avalon technology, and that also affects the valuation.  The auction will let the most optimistic of these people get the Avalon of their dreams.

The high bid was 0.01 BTC, currently worth about $14.75.  I have decided to cancel the auction, I have refunded the bids, please see TXid da2f7ddb380072d93fecd6dbf476cefd17ba27af1630e531dffabeb2e2e87500.

I believe the current price for an Avalon should be about 2.0 --- 2.5 BTC.

About 12 hours left.

Are you asking for technical help to configure the erupter, or asking for a pool address?

On Dec 27 FinCEN issued an opinion on bitcoin miners.  It was not hostile.

Does it make any sense to call up your local law enforcement now and tell them what happened?
  Perhaps even position yourself as an expert, instead of a problem.

Yes. 

I had the very same type of language in my other auction.  This language is very important.

For example, that auction was for 10 winners, the 10 top bids.  A bidder wanted to corner many of the top bids, but he placed a single large bid for the amount.

I was out of town, so there was some drama in the auction thread for a day or so that was not helpful to him, me, or other bidders.

I refunded his blunder-bid in it's entirety using the "any time, any reason" rule, to keep the interpretation of the auction chain clear to everyone, and I allowed him to make another, more reasonable bid.