Man, whoever Jose is seems to like these auctions, he has won all of them so far.
Waateva, I'll reproduce here what I wrote in my most recent r/mk post since its relevant to this discussion.
Jose has been a great supporter of my work. I respect the anonymity of my customers, but if he chooses to come forward and talk about his purchases or his keycap collection of course he's welcome to do so.
I've been running auctions for several reasons. They generate interest and give people a reason to visit my site, they help with the dilemma of knowing what to set prices at -particularly with handmade artisans as I don't collect them and have little idea what the going rate is- and auctions also allow me to justify pouring more hours into a single keycap.
Auctions aren't perfect. As an artist I'd like to see my work reach as many hands as possible, but when I'm devoting so many hours to each keycap it can be frustrating to sell them for very little. Its very true that auctions may end up rewarding the richest buyers, yet fixed-priced sales can reward whoever clicks the Buy button fastest or happens to be online at a particular time.
I don't think either solution is perfect and in future plan on adopting a mix of fixed-prices, auctions, and lotteries which I don't yet have the tech to implement. That said feedback on the way things are being handled is always most welcome and I'll give it careful consideration.
