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Kaj_Sotala comments on Bargaining and Auctions - Less Wrong
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Isn't this the sunk cost fallacy? What the dealer originally paid for the table is irrelevant: what's relevant is the price that he can get for it. If he himself has no other use for it, then he should sell it for the best price he can get, even if he made a mistake in estimating its worth and it turns out that nobody's willing to pay $50 for it.
I think it might be important here that the dealer has to do this many times. Yes, sometimes he will need to take a loss on an item to free up inventory space. But for any particular item, if it doesn't sell it is more likely that the right buyer just wasn't present. If a dealer consistently follows the policy of ignoring his purchase cost, the result is that he goes out of business.
No, I don't think this makes sense. The dealer's opportunity to care about how much they paid for the table passed when they bought it. After that, all that matters when it comes to price-setting is how much they think buyers will pay, and any costs related to keeping it stocked
It's really hard to know how much any random person will value a given antique, considering the uniqueness of antiques and people. It's really easy to know how much you paid for a given antique. As a heuristic to keep in mind while bargaining "Always sell for more than what you bought for" seems like it would be helpful, even if in the abstract it doesn't seem like it should be important information.
If the dealer has other people he could sell it to, it's an auction, not a bargain.