With their low-rent advertising and seemingly outlandish success stories of people buying vintage cars for only a few dollars, so-called penny auction sites like QuiBids.com and Swoopo seem too good to be true. News coverage on these sites appears to be divided — between labeling them retail crack and covering the latest bottom-dollar big buy — so we figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask the Consumerist hive mind to see if any of you have had first-hand experiences with penny auctions.

Tell us about your experiences — for better or worse — in the comments. And if you happen to live in the NYC metro area and want to share your story on video with our corporate cousins at Consumer Reports, e-mail Iris at idudman@consumer.org with your contact info and a brief summary of your story.

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