I didn't make a judgement on that method of price discovery. My comment was that it may still result in a price higher than the one desired by the RPi creators.

I didn't make a judgement on that method of price discovery. My comment was that it may still result in a price higher than the one desired by the RPi creators. Price discovery is not their goal, their goal is to make devices with educational applications cheap enough to be extremely affordable. If a retailer like Adafruit agrees with that goal, then a reverse auction or any other form of price discovery will run counter to that goal if it results in a higher price.