What Happened to the Big Yellow Diamond on Bidz.com?

Bidz.com (BIDZ) shares rebounding today from the sell-off earlier in the week on a negative report from Citron Research that raised a variety of questions about the company and its business.

Meanwhile, a couple of changes have been made to the company’s web site that are worth noting.

For one, the company seems to have stopped selling televisions. There is no category for televisions or consumer electronics on the front page, or even under the “more categories” link. TV auctions were a major topic of discussion on the company’s conference call with the Street this week. As I pointed out in a previous post, in one auction on the site a 42-inch plasma TV sold for $11,075 - and received multiple bids north of $10,000 - despite being worth a tenth of that price or less. In another auction, someone made a winning bid of $6,650 for a combination flashlight/radio/television gizmo worth under $50. The company that sold the TV, Clear Solution Partners, is owned by a former BIDZ exec named Matthew Mills.

And the other surprising thing is that the auction of the 50-carat yellow diamond that has been on the home page for at least a week is now nearly impossible to find, unless you the specific auction number. It isn’t on the home page, the rings page, the diamond jewelery page, or anyplace else that I can find. In recent days, bidding on the diamond had been quite active; the current top bid is $532,047, by bidder sexyramos1. The odd thing is this: there were 19 bids in a two hour period early yesterday morning, all moving up in very small increments - the total move in that period was less than $500. And since 5:44 a.m. yesterday, there have been no new bids at all.

The status of the large diamond auction is interesting for all kinds of reasons; it was a major topic of discussion on the recent conference call; the question the company couldn’t answer is whether there really is such a large group of people willing to spend more than half a million bucks online for a large diamond. And now they seem to have more or less hidden the auction from view.

Curious, dontcha think?

Bidz.com Thursday is up $1.52, or 15%, at $11.62.

Comments

[chuckie1234]

I just think its shady how Bidz uses spyware and adware to advertise their products