Product Spotlight: Portable iPod Boombox

Remember that time John Cusack rolled up the sleeves of his trench coat, hoisted a boom box over his head and won Ione Skye’s heart with a rock song?

We realize that we lost some of you with the word “boom box,” but that’s OK. All you need to know is that it’s a terribly romantic movie from the eighties, codified in the public consciousness as the film with the above-mentioned image of heartfelt teen drama. Behold the glory of Phil Collins.


This moment would’ve been impossible without the aid of that ‘80s antique. While it’s now unfortunately passé, the boom box had its moment — once upon a time it was an indelible image of cool. Don’t believe us? Check these out:

While we’re not going to try to revive this dated but awesome machine, QuiBids does sell a smaller type of boom box updated for the modern, iPod-wielding era. The Portable iPod Boombox comes with a remote and lately, we’ve been selling them for way cheap.

How cheap? Well, of the previous 33 auctions for these things, the percentage of savings has averaged up to an astounding 93%. In fact, more than half of the auctions for the Portable iPod Boombox end at $0.03 or less. These are the items we call “slam dunks” around the office.

Of the 33 auctions, the ending price ranges from $0.10 to $1.67. The $1.67 auction however, is something of an outlier, as the most expensive auction before it only ended at $0.23.

Nine of the 14 auctions with additional prizes (either a 1X Gameplay or an additional 20 Voucher Bids) ended at less than $0.10, which isn’t enough — in our professional opinion — to dissuade customers from bidding in Hybrid Auctions. Many do avoid these auctions, fearing that the increased prize will attract more bidders. But it’s certainly not always the case. Four of the remaining five Hybrid Auctions ended between $0.10 and $0.19, and the expensive outlier auction was the fifth. Excepting for the last one, all the Hybrid Auction winners walked away with 90+% savings.

Check out the graphic below for a little more insight into what prices auctions for the iPod Boombox were ending. Happy bidding!

QuiBids Product Spotlight: Energy EW100 225-Watt Subwoofer

Music is fun, that much is established. You know what makes music more fun? A big ol’ vicious low-end sound that gets your body movin’ and rattles every window in your house so hard that the neighbors’ dog tucks its tail between its legs and sulks off to hide.

You can’t get that full, bass-driven sound without a subwoofer, and lucky for you, QuiBids currently has a bunch of awesome ones by Energy in stock. We ran the numbers on the last 29 auctions for them so that when the one that’s currently posted heats up in about two hours, you can go in with realistic expectations of what to spend!

The first and most striking characteristic of these auctions is that the average winner saved $284.90. That’s pretty darn remarkable, considering this subwoofer’s priced at $299.99. You could get a pair and have a pretty killer in-home theater setup for under $40 if you approach these auctions the right way. In fact, only two winners saved less than $200 on these auctions, so we’ll go ahead and classify the Energy Subwoofers in the “Slam Dunk” category.

Second, the average ending price was $2.06. However, I think it’s realistically a bit less than this. When you eliminate two unusually high outliers from the equation (auctions that ended at $11.05 and $8.41, both more than four times the average), the average ending price drops to $1.49. Another interesting thing I noticed was that zero auctions ended in the price range of $1.49—$2.06. They were all either much lower (in the range of mere cents to an even dollar) or much higher, suggesting something of an inverse bell curve pattern. Because of that I suggest getting aggressive earlier in the auctions, and try to scare people away before the price gets out of hand.

Third, the average number of bids required to win a subwoofer was…53. So we advise you to make sure you’re willing to part with about that many bids in order to win this particular item. Do the math, and that’s just about $31.90, which is a pretty fair price for a brand-new subwoofer, don’t you think?