Pig in a poke

Having recently acquired experience buying and selling thru an online auction, I think of when I was a kid wanting to buy my paternal grandpa's old station wagon since he didn't use it. A fair market value at that time was about 500. I asked him what he would think if a guy were to offer him 500 for it. Playing it out non-nonchalant trying to get a fair price that I thought was within my grasp but not wanting him to cut me slack cause I was a grandson. LOL...later figured out that might have driven the price up. Anyhow his response " I'd think he was a da*& fool". kinda stopped that pursuit. I figured he knew the product better than I did.

My opinion of selling or buying thru online auction with merely a picture and description is that there are probably alot of people out there on the selling side, or even as experienced buyers..watching sales go on thinking...that bidder would have to be...to pay that price. Bidding on something you don't know much about..even its cost if you bought it from a retail store...is summed up in one phrase, and I checked wikipedia to see it's take on the idiom, they did...


Pig-in-a-poke is an idiom that refers to a confidence trick originating in the Late Middle Ages, when meat was scarce but apparently rats and cats were not.

The scheme entailed the sale of a "suckling pig" in a "poke" (bag). The wriggling bag actually contained a cat—not particularly prized as a source of meat—that was sold unopened to the victim.

A common colloquial expression in the English language, to "buy a pig in a poke," is to make a risky purchase without inspecting the item beforehand. The phrase can also be applied to accepting an idea or plan without a full understanding of its basis. Similar expressions exist in other languages, most of them meaning to buy a cat in a bag,