It is common knowledge that the Shanghai government will hold the license plate auciton at the third Saturday of every month. This auction mechanism remains one of the most contentious and divisive debates for shanghainese due to its unfairness and irrationality. Last Saturday, my wilfe participate in this most competitive auction game. Though under the great help of my veteran colleague, she still failed this time. And her explanation is that the last miniute bid is hardly access to the server because of the network congestion. Don't you think it is funny? She has not been given a opportunity to raise her hand!

Something is still interesting in the data released by the authority. According to official statistics, 11,000 people scramble for 7000 plate on May 24 with the lowest and average hammer price hit 74,400 and 74,503. The success rate is less than 7%. The average transaction price is only 103 yuan higher than the lowest bid. How closely they are! However, this is not the end of my story,we still can dig deeply into these data.

Let's focus on the auction rules stipulated by the Shanghai government. 1.any initial offer higher than 72,600 would be treated as overbid and prohibited. 2. each participant could only revise the bid twice in final stage.3 the maximum bid increment is 300 yuan at every turn.So you can not raise the price substantially through repeatly bidding. And ascribe to the inevitable trend of rising, any early bid would be surpassed by the later ones. Which mean all the bids before 11:29 are useless and futile. Thanks to the lessons of the previous auction, all bidders are fully aware that and rare people give their bid before 11:29.Torrents of last minute's bidding flood into the network, which will definitely trigger a online congestion. Only when their bids accepted by the terminals at the last 20-30s could people have a fighting chance. As a result, it is the fluke rather than the high bids leading to the successful bidding.

In conclusion, the monthly event in Shanghai is essentially a lottery game instead of real auction. Just like the auto plate auction in Beijing but with a different form.