Price, value and auction

I recently wrote a post called Does the customer determine value?

Here are some more thoughts related to value, price and the customer.

Think about an auction, the seller will often have a reserve price (the minimum amount they’re willing to sell the item for). Yet items often get sold for significantly higher because buyers are prepared to keep bidding if they want the item badly enough.

Even if an item could fetch around 20k, the seller can never start with that price, they have to allow the buyers to build up to it. Instead, the seller can only hope that people will pay that amount or at least above their minimum price.

I think it could be said that, although the seller sets the price it is in fact the customer that determines the value of the item.