New alternative to eBay (Score 1)

There is a new eBay alternative called Bidtopia which appears to making incredible progress. Sure it is brand new (only 3 months old) and relatively unknown, but a couple of things make it very unique. First, they seem to hand select their sellers and they are building a very small but elite group including many Titanium and Platinum sellers that I recognize from eBay. To be a seller you have to be approved through an on line application process, and you must have previous online auction or e-tail experience (they actually turned me down). Secondly, buyers/bidders have to go through an application process also and they even have to complete a 99 cent online transaction to verify they are capable of online payment and confirm their true identity. This means that you cant simply open a fictitious account with a free e-mail and bogus name. The last thing I find fascinating is that the require all their auctions to be won at fair market value where the buyer sets the price. All Bidtopia auctions start at 99 cents with no reserve, so no wading through a list of overpriced merchandise. While they do have a reverse auction format, these items continue to drop in price until someone buys them or they eventually fall to 99 cents as well. While you would think that this would create a site full of low end junk, I actually found sellers listing $18,000 bijon men's suits, brand new HP G5 Proliant servers, iphones and even women's fashion from St. John. All in all Bidtopia seem to be taking a different approach than all the other auction sites. Rather than throwing out a wide net with a "catch all - we accept everyone" mentality, they seem to be custom grooming their site to their own peculiar standard. While a google search will tell you a ton of information on them, I first discovered Bidtopia when reading a case study that Microsoft did on their technology platform which I found really interesting. Apparently they seem to have no qualms about hosting their production site on beta Microsoft product http://www.microsoft.com/industry/retail/casestudylibrary.mspx?casestudyid=4000001488