Two weeks ago I had an amusing, but fortunate, snipe incident. I usually place auto snipes on about half the items I bid on, and the other half I manually snipe if I am not sure on the amount I want to bid and if I know I am going to be around to watch the auction end.
There was an item that I really really wanted that I figured would go for around $50. For whatever reason I didn’t choose to auto snipe and planned to just be around and watch the end and place a last second bid. My bid was going to be $111.11 just to place some odd amount, that we all often do. I figured that amount should win it because it was an odd item in my niche which I figured wouldn’t attract much interest.
As I watched the end of the auction with about 4 mins to go, I noticed my internet connection was getting really slow and spotty. The current high bid was about $25. Fearing my internet was slow, I placed my bid at about 40 seconds left…and wouldn’t you know the max bid for the current high bidder was also $111.11, but he had bid first so I was still losing. Go figure. Since I had placed it with 40 seconds left, I had time to nudge it up, and I won the item. If I had placed my auto snipe with the amount I figured would be enough to win, or waited to the last second to manually bid, I would have lost. That’s called dumb luck.
