LEWISTON – Taking an idea inspired by Dutch tulip merchants – instead of getting more expensive, everything at auction gets cheaper by the minute – Bates College junior Elliot Moskow thinks he could unseat eBay.

His company, Pricefalls-.com, launched last month. Monday morning, it had 109,272 items up for sale.

Unlike eBay, where goods start at an opening bid and ratchet up in price as people compete to buy them, Pricefalls.com items start high and slowly shed dollars and cents to some pre-determined low. Bidders sit on their hands and wait to buy at a price that’s considered a good deal – but not so good that someone else scoops it up first.

The Web site’s nerve center, for now, is a first-floor apartment a few blocks from the college. Another Bates grad just moved to Las Vegas to set up corporate headquarters.

“Aside from classes and homework, I put every waking hour into this that I have,” said Moskow, 21, an economics major and now, CEO.

The idea was born last year out of his frustration at setting up a virtual storefront on eBay. (He’d been mining police auctions for finds like jewelry that he could buy low and sell high.)

“I had to pay tons and tons of fees when my items didn’t sell,” Moskow said.

A friend mentioned the Dutch auction approach to sales. The idea took hold. By putting out the call for local talent, Moskow connected with Peter Schaefer and Chad Casey, both Bates class of ’08 grads.

Schaefer, from Germany, is now chief information officer and executive vice president, and Casey, from Mexico, Maine, creative director.

Schaefer had been on a med school track and changed course for the online auction start-up.

“In modesty, I can truly say we will give eBay a run for its money,” he said.

The bulk of the items for sale now have been listed by Pricefalls.com itself, the result of behind-the-scenes agreements with retailers.

“A lot of other auction sites have failed because they were purely relying on organic growth,” Schaefer said.

Those would-be buyers logged on, saw a few thousand things for sale and kept going. “It wasn’t intriguing to them, it wasn’t enticing,” he said.

As more individual sellers start logging on and using the service, Pricefalls.com will scale back those arrangements.

On Monday, it had items like a Sony VAIO desktop computer originally listed at $1,999 down to $799.85, Disney’s “Theme Park Sing-a-long” CD originally listed at $17.99 down to $16.73 and Burberry Touch eau de toilette spray originally listed at $75 and down to $51.23.

Prices drop every 15 seconds in varying increments.

Moskow, from Florida, said the site has logged sales already in jewelry, comics and fragrance. He declined to name Pricefalls.com’s board members or the “group of very influential advisors” noted in promotional material but said his father, Las Vegas physician Eric Moskow, has been its chief backer. That made Vegas an easy pick for headquarters.

He estimated start-up so far at $50,000 with a national marketing campaign planned in the next two to three weeks.

“The term ‘Dutch auction’ will become like Google or MySpace,” predicted Schaefer.

Bates College economics Professor Dmytro Zhosan, who teaches Moskow in a game theory class, said Dutch auctions have the advantage of potentially bringing in more money for the seller and creating a fun environment for the buyer. Instead of a race to the top price where people with less money get shut out early, it’s a race to the bottom price for everyone.

“I think the idea is very good. It’s a tough market to enter,” Zhosan said.

How it works: Pricefalls.com

• Check out auctions by categories like jewelry, collectibles or sporting goods.

• Each item has a starting price (the most a seller thinks they can get) and a current price that ticks downward every 15 seconds. Unknown to the buyer: The seller’s bottom price, or the least they’re willing to accept for an item.

• Auctions last anywhere from one to seven days. (You, as a would-be buyer, don’t know how much longer the auction has to go.)

• Either buy it now, keep an eye on an auction hoping it goes lower, or commit to an “if it hits” price – if it falls that low before anyone else buys it, the item’s yours.

• Sellers pay a sliding fee to the Web site based on the final auction price, anywhere from 61 cents on a $10 sale to $40.83 if the item sells for $2,000. For now, there are no listing fees.

Still confused? Check out the online tutorial at pricefalls.com