Question...why does this make sense?

Bid 25 million for an item yesterday. Checked today and the last 5 sales (all today) were 18, 20, 21, 22, and 22 million.

O...kay? I've heard of lag...but that's ridiculous.

Luck of the draw for who gets it, I beileve.

It works like this:
The SELLER puts an item up for sale, but the BIDDER has no idea what the price of that item is.

The BIDDER can then make a bid for an item. If he bids an amount over what the SELLER was asking for the item, that currency is transferred to the SELLER and the BIDDER obtains the item. If the BIDDER bids an amount under what the SELLER is asking for, then his bid simply sits in the system, waiting for a SELLER to place an item in the auction house that is an amount of currency that is less than or equal to the amount the BIDDER is willing to bid. When this happens the BIDDER automatically obtains the item (which waits in the Auction House for him) and the SELLER obtains his idle currency.

The LEAST EXPENSIVE item on sale will always be given to the HIGHEST BID AMOUNT offered. If you see text stating something to the effect of "100 items, 20 bidders" that means that there are 20 individual bids for an item that are all UNDER the asking price for that particular item.

The sales history merely gives you an idea of what the price range is for the item in question, but it is not telling you what the actual price of the item was; just how much the bidder paid for it. An Item that went for 200k might have only required a mere 10k to obtain.

Alternatively, someone might put an item up for sale when there currently are none, and then quickly buy his own product back for a large sum so as to make the item APPEAR more valuable than it actually is for people who depend on the Sales History to determine the value of a product. At this point he then re-sells his item and waits for some sucker to spend way more currency than they should have.

A truly wealthy person might be able to monopolize an item by buying every single one that goes on sale, and then sell it back for double or triple the original price. This only works for a limited amount of time, however, because once people realize that a particular item is rising in price they'll attempt to sell the crap out of that item, which leads to an over-inflation of the product and then drastic decrease in it's value as the masses attempt to out-compete each other by lowering their prices. Eventually the item becomes so cheap it is worthless, and everyone goes home. At this point the original monopolizer can resume business by hoarding the item until there is a demand for it again.

In short, don't trust price history. It's full of ****.

Warkupo, the issue here is that the market doesn't seem to be obeying those rules. If there are sales going through for, say, 18 million, it means that those bids were, at that point, the highest bids out there .... despite the OP's 25 million bid sitting there.

OP, I'd try canceling your bid and rebidding on the off chance that the market somehow forgot about yours.

Sometimes due to lag the market doesn't register your bids. Happened to me a few times.

As stated, it does not make sense. It breaks the rules as we know them.

Check your latency. I don't think the devs intended to screw you over.

There is an occasional problem (I've mostly seen it since Going Rogue) where the market doesn't accept your bid. I'll see it where it lists the total price you bid as 0; if you're bidding 10,000 on three Iron it will say something for bid -I don't remember the exact wording- like "10,000 (30,000 total)." If the bid didn't "take" it will say "10,000 (0 total). "

If you're not seeing that, then I don't know what's going on.