Posted By:
Jim VBMike (inside),
You asked a legit question that seemed to get lost. Sniping is bidding at the last few seconds of an auction. What you do (bidding in the last 8 seconds) is sniping. But you're doing it manually. There are several services that will do it for you. Some charge a fee. Some are free. You enter the auction info into your account with the service and they do the bidding. There are advantages and disadvantages to using them. (But the advantages are way stronger. )
Advantages-
1. You can bid on multiple items, even if the auctions are closing close to the same time. (A big advantage to set builders. Often you'll see 10-15 cards closing in short sequence.)
2. You don't have to be sitting by the computer waiting for every auction to close. Enter it whenever you want.
Disadvantages-
1. Once in a while, the snipe service is not able to enter the snipe. I have "missed" on 6 out of about 1000 snipes over the last 2 years. If you really need a card, you can do it manually as well as with the service. Ebay will not have you bid yourself up. Or you can use two services to enter bids. Again, you can't bid yourself up.
2. You can not change a snipe within a certain period before the auction ends. (I use Gavelsnipe.com. Their limit is 5 minutes before.)
3. You will have to trust the company with your ebay id and password.
I'm sure some guys will add more advantages and disadvantages.