Ferminal said:
Not when the aim is to beat other players, so you bid whatever you feel will maximise your return relative to other teams. If the price is zero and everyone picks him up then the relative value is zero. If you raise the price high enough to force others with a lesser valuation out then they become a valuable pick assuming your higher valuation is accurate.
Okay, maybe I should've phrased my argument differently. Saying that noone would purchase him for more than 0 was obviously too much hyperbole to make my point accurately.
The fact is, because everyone knows that they'll still be able to acquire Valv-Piti after the auction, that an open ascending price auction would distort Valverde's 'market value.' English style auctions are good at determining the true value of a single, unique, object; but it doesn't work when the supply of the good (in this case Valverde) is infinite.
Example, say we're doing the auction, and just you and I are the only interested parties left. My bid stands at 1400 CQ points, however your private valuation of Valverde prior to auction was 1600 points. However, because you don't know what my private valuation is you do not have an incentive to bid 1600, because we both gain from keeping the price as low as possible, since the result would be ~Valverdes at a price of 1400. By not raising my offer of 1400, we both gain. You would get Valverde 'cheap' and have an additional 200 points to spend, which is beneficial for you. In a sense, you have no incentive to 'win' the auction under your system. Therefore Valverde's price is distorted, and probably will end up undervaluing what we as a community would value him at.
I'm a proponent of doing something fun with assigning a value for Valverde for next year. Because it'll either be establishing that he costs nothing (his 2011 results) in which case everyone 'buys' him, or else we take his value from his last, unsuspended season, (2494 in 2009) in which case noone will buy him. But there are more effective ways of reaching what CN-forum would consider to be his true value.