Why bid 50,000 gems on a game...

People aren't exactly the smartest when bidding with something other than USD/EUR, as if it isn't real. Ive seen the same behavior on 'buy your bid' type sites.

Who are the idiots? Those who don't sell their gems or those who do buy them?

Some people just aren't into the market or aren't even allowed to use it because of steam regulations.

It depends... a lot...

Lots of people (myself included) had thousands of icons, backgrounds and foil cards that couldn't be sold before this sale and the idea was to destroy it for gems. Of course, destroy backgrounds and icons sold for 3 cents (lowest possible value) was the idea too.

In my case, I sold exact 807 items in icons, backgrounds and foils in this sale. Lots of others have more icons and backgrounds and foils to burn through and racked a lot of gems. :)

Because people are stupid ( or want that auction winning badge). I don't get it myself, I see this as a wonderful opportunity to just sell junk ( bgs I don't like/won't use etc) and maybe in the future make a booster pack or two.

..

Right when this promotion started i saw bags going for .10 a piece, but i had already spent all wallet funds on the previous sale. Pissed me off when i saw the prices take off, would have been a quick and easy win.

They are stupid.
1000 gems almost worth of 1 usd soon. with 50,000 gems (means 50 USD) you can buy alot of game rather than shitting and buying gems from market.
Also i am not sure they dismantling the emot because ppl dont have that much to convert it into gem.
(50,000 gems means 250 Foil Card dude even with emot 50000/80 is still cost alot).
Something fishy in this event.

You're wrong. Volvo failed to remove a lot of the duped and laundered gems from first three hours failure. I think a lot of these bidders paid maybe 1/10 for these gems if that. Only when the stockpile bleeds a bit we will see if people are really stupid

Because e-peen

just dont take it serious ... the sale is coming where you can buy your cheap games

dont waste money on auction and just laugh bout the stupid people ....

They don´t pay for the game, the pay to win this single auction...it gives them 10 seconds a good feeling...
But, the sad thing no one else cares......not even valve will give them a hug.

The worst part is that people are burning uncraftable icons/bgs because they give the most (100) gems, those icons that can't be obtained anymore by crafting a badge since the badge cannont be crafted anymore (e.g. Holiday Sale 2013 badge). In the near future, when all these uncraftable icons are burned there will be only VERY few left, they will rise in price and become collector's icons, so get yours now before they vanish forever.

you're welcome grbolivar :)

I win by downloading them from the swap card games and I won I turn to swap cards gems. I won $ 0.75 by selling them in the market currently $ 40 money.. and winter sale will start soon and target until the winter sale $70 ^^ (sorry my perfectly english)

You're surprised with Borderlands ? Take a look at CSGO, 223k gems = ~170USD. This game will be available for 7,50USD in less than a week.
Don't waste your time trying to find an explanation to the human behavior when there is money involved (and in general anyway), you will get a headache, but never the answer you're looking for.

People on Steam are weird. But the market price of my crappy icons and backgrounds doubled during the holiday auction. So it's fine with me ;).

how to sale that gem?mine are not marketable..=.=

badge collection

Probably because they can. It's the most valid reason for any behavior :P

i trade my sack to with stranger..why i didnt get cs:go? :-(

Well they previously had a bunch of junk that wasn't selling on the market, and all of a sudden they can potentially turn that into a new game. So it's understandable why they would bid. What's not understandable is not considering that the sale is coming up soon and if you sell those gems you will most likely be able to get the game on sale lol.

So that 2014 Holiday Profile is ~$1000? They really want that profile, the LOL part is that it will expire Jan 2015.

It's not "tricking people", this information that you've put here is by no means hidden or secret. There are only two reasons for this:

1. People might not be the smartest when it comes to auctions.
2. There is badge reward for winning an auction during this event and it might be worth a lot to some people.

As far as I know, I could finally get rid of the 0.03 or the background/smileys I didn't like (if the cost on the market was a low price).

And for the auction, I'm bidding on games I know that aren't really attracting a lot of people and where I could have at least a chance to win one. But I will NEVER burn my entire inventory or spend a cent to have 50 000 gems.

Yes why? Bid 1.000.000 instead!