Why the last second bid....................

[theseeker]

What is the stategy behind the last second bids? Any item I'm interested in, I first evaluate and determine the maximum amount I'm willing to pay. At that point, I place my bid and usually lost out in the last seconds. And that's perfectly OK with me. If I am not on the losing end of most of my bid attempts, I feel it is a bad thing, as in my mind, I'm paying too much.

One collector mantra I never waver from is "never feel you have to have an item" or you will pay too much. And I feel this happens alot with these last second bidding wars. Feeling a need to beat that other bidder overwhelms your better judgement. If you have a bottom line price limit, where is the difference when you bid? Are these last second buyers upping there limits as they go or simply have no idea where the bidding war will take them?

[HRBAKER]

If you are talking about ebay in particular a lot of it is distrust of the anonymity of the system. If I am willing to pay $300 for something that has an opening bid of .99, I am not going to put in a $300 proxy bid and subject myself to the seller or friends/accomplice of the seller to run me up to see what the max is/was. I can set a snipe and execute the bid with 5 seconds left and accomplish exactly the same thing IMO. Why risk it. It doesn't make any difference what the max I am willing to pay is, but what I have to pay in as close to an arms-length transaction as I can make up to my max.

Hope that makes sense. To me to put in your max from the start can be like telling the seller what you are willing to pay if the auction is manipulated and I think many, many on ebay are.

[mintacular]

Sniping allows you to be away from the computer at the time of the auction's end, plus prevents anyone from countering your final bid

[BearBailey]

I typically bid in advance as I am not usually around my computer when I need to be bidding. However, I know this past weekend there were a bunch of cards from a particular set I was working on going off in a similar time frame and after the first card I hoped to buy went for a few hundred less than I expected. I was able to bid on several more until I spent the amount I figured I was going to spend on 1. So I got 8 cards, and the last 7 would have been last minute bids? Many people use sniper software, but If I want something I bid, I don't sit around my computer trying to win in the last minutes?

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

If you are talking about ebay in particular a lot of it is distrust of the anonymity of the system. If I am willing to pay $300 for something that has an opening bid of .99, I am not going to put in a $300 proxy bid and subject myself to the seller or friends/accomplice of the seller to run me up to see what the max is/was.

I think Jeff pretty much nailed it. I'll give a situation that happened to me last week. I need a 1975 Topps Hank Aaron #660 in NM condition to finish my '75 Topps set. Last week I found both a pretty nice centered PSA 7 and SGC 84. I thought I would bid on both, keep the best looking one and re-sell the other.

I won the PSA card for the minimum opening bid of $30.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWNX:IT

The SGC card ended a couple days later and I had a proxy bid of $47 (why that much I don't know). Somebody ran my bid up all the way to the max. I'm not saying is was a schill, but I set a record price for this card at $47, when VCP average is only about $24. I ended up paying almost twice VCP average. If I would have sniped, this probably wouldn't have happened. Lesson learned on my part.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWNX:IT

[Exhibitman]

I snipe on Ebay so I don't get shilled up. I am sbsolutely convinced that I get items cheaper--sometimes a lot cheaper--with a snipe than with a max bid. And I never miss stuff with a snipe. I once forgot about a really major item for my collection and missed it because I didn't have a sniping program in place. Not gonna do that again.

I often wait to the last to bid on items in a regular auction because I don't necessarily know my budget allocation until I get KO'd on some items of higher priorities.

[theseeker]

As always some really insightful replies. Thanks.

This has brought me to a few other related questions. Sniper software? Any recommendations and how does it work?

Also, on several occasions I have won an auction on Ebay at exactly my maximum bid (note: I always make it a odd number total.) Could shilling possibly be this precise?

[David W]

If it's something I really want that is going to be more than $30 or so, I just snipe at the end, saves me being run up or losing the auction for $30.05.

If it's something I don't care if I win or lose, I'll just throw a bid on there for about half what I think it's worth, and I usually win about 25% or so of those items, usually cheaper items.

[Big Ben]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

If you are talking about ebay in particular a lot of it is distrust of the anonymity of the system. If I am willing to pay $300 for something that has an opening bid of .99, I am not going to put in a $300 proxy bid and subject myself to the seller or friends/accomplice of the seller to run me up to see what the max is/was. I can set a snipe and execute the bid with 5 seconds left and accomplish exactly the same thing IMO. Why risk it. It doesn't make any difference what the max I am willing to pay is, but what I have to pay in as close to an arms-length transaction as I can make up to my max.

Hope that makes sense. To me to put in your max from the start can be like telling the seller what you are willing to pay if the auction is manipulated and I think many, many on ebay are.

Well said. This is the strategy that I use. One thing that I have noticed recently on EBay with collectibles other than baseball cards, is a seller who has a low minimum starting bid at the beginning of the auction and then raises the minimum bid drastically in the final days. After I saw this, I lost any interest that I might have had with the item.

[Leon]

I moved this from the post war category as it's more general in nature and others might have thoughts on it too. Already some good points given. And to answer another question, I personally use Gavelsnipe but there are plenty of auction sniping s/w's out there. Also, we even have sniping built into our Grandslambids venue....when there is a need .

[D. Bergin]

As a long-time Ebay seller I'd like to think most of these accusations of shilling are just buyer paranoia. I'm sure it does go on here and there, but as someone who has run thousands of auctions over the years, I would hope I'm not in the minority in thinking my reputation is more important then running up an item a few extra dollars with a fake account.

What sniping has done is drive the price down in many areas, because not nearly as many bidding wars go on as used to. I remember the good old days of Ebay selling, before bidding ID's became private, in watching two bidding competitors who you know didn't like each other, drive up the price of an item throughout the course of the week.

As a seller, I would love for Ebay to make bidders identities public again. Would end all these constant accusations of every seller on Ebay shilling up their auctions, and might bring back a little competitive spirit between bidding rivals. Not as much as before because of sniping software, but enough to get the juices flowing, I think.

[Mrc32]

Had a snipe set for $30 on a card this past weekend. Snipe went off. I ended up winning it for $19.

Had I bid $30 a day or two before the end of the auction, I'm sure the other people who were bidding would have tried to outbid me.

Pretty much common sense.

[tonyo]

Originally Posted by theseeker

"never feel you have to have an item" or you will pay too much. And I feel this happens alot with these last second bidding wars. Feeling a need to beat that other bidder overwhelms your better judgement.

Aside from the "protect against shill" angle, This is why I wait as long as possible to place my bid....to guard against the person you describe here. I don't want to give anyone a chance to keep asking themselves if they want to pay more.

I don't bid more than my self imposed limits on any of the mostly collector grade stuff I buy, but I don't want to pay more than I have to pay, either!

[mintacular]

I use GIXEN, no problems and cheap $6 year, as long as you aren't snipping on hundreds of lots, I think you can have 10-20 snipes set at any given time.

http://www.gixen.com

[Robextend]

Agree with Jeff and Adam completely. I was very active on Ebay for a couple years before I started to use a sniping service and I know that I have saved myself some money. If I win great, because I will get the item for what I want to pay or less...if I lose no big deal because the item will have went for more than I was willing to pay.

I also use Gavelsnipe, never really had a problem with it.

[DixieBaseball]

I never put a top bid in and let it sit there for 7-10 days so the seller or even an overactive competitive bidder will run it up to beat me out or take the bid to my high bid, so I can pay more... Perfect example was last week, I bid on a card that I was a bit indifferent on for sale on ebay, so I put a bid in on day 1 of $222 and let it set for 7 days, and wouldn't you know it, on the last day of bidding a bidder with 0 feedback outbids me at $223, then within 12 hours of the auction ending, the seller sends me a 2nd chance offer to buy the item. I reported the seller to Ebay, and didn't buy the card for $222, which was my original high bid. I rarely bid like this, but occassionally will put a soft bid in to track a card or see what happens, and I feel that about 1/3 ro 1/2 the time I put a top bid in early, it is inevitable my bid gets beat or run up to the top. I rarely lose out when I put a last second bid in, and I generally get the card for way less than expected. I have bought thousands of items on ebay, and to me there is only one way to bid on ebay to make sure you don't overpay. That is to bid in the final seconds whether it be sniping or just popping a bid in...

[Jewish-collector]

OK, so what a good, free, easy to use sniping program ?

[Robextend]

Originally Posted by Jewish-collector

OK, so what a good, free, easy to use sniping program ?

I recommend Gavelsnipe.

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

I snipe on Ebay so I don't get shilled up. I am sbsolutely convinced that I get items cheaper--sometimes a lot cheaper--with a snipe than with a max bid. And I never miss stuff with a snipe. I once forgot about a really major item for my collection and missed it because I didn't have a sniping program in place. Not gonna do that again.

I often wait to the last to bid on items in a regular auction because I don't necessarily know my budget allocation until I get KO'd on some items of higher priorities.

I wholeheartedly with Adam.....for the exact same reasons. However, I use a manual snipe for the items I am really interested in.

MWheat

[bobbyw8469]

I like BIDNIP. They are very cheap (no percentage of your win, unlike some of the others), and they only debit you if you win.

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by NashvilleBaseball

I never put a top bid in and let it sit there for 7-10 days so the seller or even an overactive competitive bidder will run it up to beat me out or take the bid to my high bid, so I can pay more... Perfect example was last week, I bid on a card that I was a bit indifferent on for sale on ebay, so I put a bid in on day 1 of $222 and let it set for 7 days, and wouldn't you know it, on the last day of bidding a bidder with 0 feedback outbids me at $223, then within 12 hours of the auction ending, the seller sends me a 2nd chance offer to buy the item. I reported the seller to Ebay, and didn't buy the card for $222, which was my original high bid. I rarely bid like this, but occassionally will put a soft bid in to track a card or see what happens, and I feel that about 1/3 ro 1/2 the time I put a top bid in early, it is inevitable my bid gets beat or run up to the top. I rarely lose out when I put a last second bid in, and I generally get the card for way less than expected. I have bought thousands of items on ebay, and to me there is only one way to bid on ebay to make sure you don't overpay. That is to bid in the final seconds whether it be sniping or just popping a bid in...

Anyone else think that when it comes to second chance offers, that ebay should automatically assess the second chance to reflect as if the high bid never happened? Basically, if you had the high bid at $20(despite what your max was), and a shill(or bidder who doesn't want the item for some reason) runs you past your max(say up to $40), that a second chance offer should automatically pretend that bid never happened, and return back to that original $20?

Sure, it's not the best for the seller and would decrease the number of second chance offers given, BUT it would eliminate the need for this type of shill bidding.

I got a second chance offer once for my high bid, but I messaged the seller and told him that I'd only pay what the high would've been without that bidder. He bit, and I saved something like $12. Sure, not a big deal, but it's $12 that I shouldn't have had to spend because of the illegitimate bidder.

[slidekellyslide]

Gavelsnipe is easy and free..I've won hundreds of items sniping with that program over the years. I snipe for a couple of reasons...one is because I don't want to get my bid run up over the course of 7 days, and two is because sometimes I forget about an item on ebay...many times I'll win an item that I completely forgot about and am thankful that I had set a snipe on it...case in point the other day I won a lot of 20 Casey Stengel press photos for the opening bid and had completely forgotten about that lot..I set my snipe right away when I saw it listed.

[deadballera]

I use AuctionStealer or Gavelsnipe.


Some items I just place a max bid early and some items I use the sniping services.

[novakjr]

Now as far as the last second bidding goes. It's all about knowing the mindset of the other bidders. Many people don't give a high bid, and once they get outbid will bid again, last second bids often keep your price lower by not giving the other bidder that chance to counter. Sure, I've lost a few items, by coming up short and having to scramble with not enough time left to get in another bid in. BUT, I feel like I've saved alot of money on the items that I have won..

However, if an item is something that I MUST HAVE, it ALWAYS get's my max bid. Need vs. Want is the difference in whether an item brings in a good price or not.

[doug.goodman]

I only bid in the last few seconds because :

1 - It doesn't give anybody a chance to bid again after my bid is in.

2 - It doesn't give ME a chance to bid again, if I've been outbid.

I bid the most I want to pay, and if I win it great, if I don't oh well.

I never have used a snipe program. If it's not an important enough item for me to be there at the end, than I will sometimes put in a bid as late as I can (like if the auction ends while I'm on a flight), but otherwise I just wait until the next one comes up.

Of course, this whole strategy backfired on that Sandy Koufax first career win scored scorecard last fall when the internet went down at my South American hotel 45 seconds before the auction closed. I was about to bid more than double what the winning bid ended up being.

Oh well.

I did get the scorecard from his second career win.

Doug

[glchen]

I use Quicksnipe, which is also completely free.

[AndyG09]

Gavelsnipe works for me. No cost and error free so far. Only bummer is forgetting to set the snipe. Now that is really frustrating!

[PowderedH2O]

I used to bid early and often too. Never again. One night in 1999 or so, I had to go to work, so I bid on a nice autographed item that I felt was worth $150. There was a bid in at $60. So, I bid my $150 and went to work. I was now the high bidder at $65. I got home to check on my auction, and the bidder that I had outbid had bid up in $5 increments all the way to $135. It cost me $70 to place that bid. At the time I was putting myself through college delivering pizzas. I'd have made money by taking the night off and just sniping at the last second.

And I have been on the other end too. I've looked at a card and bid on it in the last couple of minutes. I see that I am outbid and all of a certain I am determined to win it. So, on a card that I put in a $150 max bid, all of a sudden I throw in a $250 max bid, or $300. And sometimes I would win. And overpay. Now, I set the amount on the snipe (I use biddingscheduler.com, btw) and I don't watch the auction. I win some, I lose some. But my bid never gets run up, and I never get caught up in the action and overbid.

Sam

[John V]

I've used Gavelsnipe without a problem. I'm curious, why use a fee-based service?

[egbeachley]

Why I use a sniping service.

About 8 years ago I bid around $200 for a nice item. It was at $20 or so with 10 minutes remaining. A new bidder bid $30 and was outbid by me, of course. Then he put in $40. Then $50. Then $60 and so on until he was the high bidder at $205 when he stopped and won it.

If I sniped, he would have probably stopped at $30 and I would have won it at the next bid increment (assuming no other bidders).

And the reason you often win at your exact price is because of the bid increments. If you put in a bid of $40.27 and another bid comes in at $40, you win it at $40.27 even though the bid increment is supposed to be $1.

[GrayGhost]

A friend on the board here turned me to Gavel Snipe a few months back, and I love it. Just set it and go. Then, if you have second thoughts you can always up your snipe or cancel it, as long as its not w/in a few minutes of auction close. I don't recall the exact time.

[T206Collector]

There is absolutely no reason to bid on an item through ebay, either mid-auction or in the final seconds. The only people this makes happy are the sellers. If buyers would all agree to use snipe services exclusively, it would bring the prices down tremendously across the board.

The only proof you need of this phenomena is that ebay does not have its own sniping service. Heck, they haven't even done it with a fee.

In fact, in ebay's definition of "Sniping" they encourage you to put in "the maximum amount you're willing to pay for an item upfront" (see below), which is the opposite of sniping. If there was any money to be made by ebay or the seller through sniping, they would actively encourage it and participate in the market for sniping services.

Why would you ever want to signal to competing bidders or the seller that you are interested in an item with more than 3 seconds left in the auction? It's almost like going to a used car dealer and not trying to negotiate a lower price than sticker because you're comfortable with the asking price. You negotiate with a used car dealer. You snipe with ebay. Failing to do either will cost you money. Plain and simple. Irrefutable.


eBay's Definition of Sniping:
Placing a bid in the closing minutes or seconds of an auction-style listing. Any bid, placed before the listing ends, is allowed on eBay. To protect yourself from being outbid at the last moment, enter the maximum amount you're willing to pay for an item upfront, and eBay will bid automatically for you, making sure you're the high bidder until your maximum is reached. This system is sometimes called proxy bidding.

[hangman62]

Id be concerned about this possible bad ebay action - You put an early large bid on a item - $75 with 4 days to go....some yahoo comes in and bids in incrm of $5., till he passed you..and then retracts that last bid- so he now knows your high bid...and he pumped you up to your max . Im guessing it could happen ???

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by hangman62

Id be concerned about this possible bad ebay action - You put an early large bid on a item - $75 with 4 days to go....some yahoo comes in and bids in incrm of $5., till he passed you..and then retracts that last bid- so he now knows your high bid...and he pumped you up to your max . Im guessing it could happen ???

I blocked a bidder who did this on two of my auctions about a month ago...I have no idea who it was, and I sure didn't want some joker doing things that look like shill bidding on my auctions. When you see someone with multiple bid retractions like a former poster on this board (Shimikuzowa?) you just know that they're running people up to see their high bid..once they surpass it they retract their bid.

[ALR-bishop]

I use snipes in case I end up in the same hotel as Doug

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Why I use a sniping service.

About 8 years ago I bid around $200 for a nice item. It was at $20 or so with 10 minutes remaining. A new bidder bid $30 and was outbid by me, of course. Then he put in $40. Then $50. Then $60 and so on until he was the high bidder at $205 when he stopped and won it.

If I sniped, he would have probably stopped at $30 and I would have won it at the next bid increment (assuming no other bidders).

And the reason you often win at your exact price is because of the bid increments. If you put in a bid of $40.27 and another bid comes in at $40, you win it at $40.27 even though the bid increment is supposed to be $1.

Ed, I agree and this is another reason I submit last second bids for items I want. I was purchasing some business software a few weeks ago. I researched final auction prices from previous auctions. There happened to be a dozen sellers listed on eBay all at reasonable prices. I put in reasonable max bids and was out bid in the last minute on all of them. Finally, I decided to manually snipe one of the auctions. I chose an auction that ended at an odd time and won the auction for less than my max bids on the previous auctions and ended up saving perhaps 10%.

MWheat

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I blocked a bidder who did this on two of my auctions about a month ago...I have no idea who it was, and I sure didn't want some joker doing things that look like shill bidding on my auctions. When you see someone with multiple bid retractions like a former poster on this board (Shimikuzowa?) you just know that they're running people up to see their high bid..once they surpass it they retract their bid.

Yeah, every time I see somebody retract a bid in one of my auctions I always get concerned. #1, because it looks bad, #2, because it always seems to affect the final price negatively.

Shimikuzowa was a particularly bad case. Makes you wonder what peoples motives are sometimes. There was a guy on "The Daily Show" last night that wrote a book about "Psychopaths", and how many people who actually fit this definition are out there. Most are not serial killers but give it away with their behaviors. Many of them are very successful people.

[bobbyw8469]

The only downfall I see to sniping is, say you are looking at an item worth around $750-$1,000 (what it usually sells for as a PSA 9). The card is by SGC instead of PSA and not a widely followed fellow (no Mickey Mantle). On the last day of bidding, the card was started at 99 cents 6 days ago, and bidded up to the princely sum of $40. I have had sellers pull the auction down rather than risk giving the item away. If the item was at a more realistic level (say half of the true worth), then the seller might keep the item going. However, with no action, the seller gets cold feet and yanks the auction.

[Exhibitman]

I use auctionstealer's subscription service and have found it to be 100% reliable.

I don't know whether someone will shill me on any given auction but I know for sure that if I use a sniper they will not shill me unless they snipe their own auction. I suppose that is possible, but is it likely someone would do so? I think not. I think it is far more likely that someone would see an early bid and start pecking away at it to see how high it is.

I also put in soft early bids and set a hard ceiling snipe to cover myself later on, either to kill a BIN that I don't want to take or to make sure the seller is aware that there is interest in the item so he doesn't panic and take someone else's off-ebay offer.

Another reason I like sniping is bid groups, which allows me to set bids on a number of similar items with the later bids automatically terminated without being placed if I win the first one. Great when a seller posts two of the same card that I want.

As for precision of shilling and sniping, I know that for the items I collect I have often set a snipe that ended up within a dollar or two of the final price. I feel pretty good at handicapping results on items that interest me, so I do not have difficulty believing that someone else could analyze things and come up about where I am. The reason I see that more with Ebay than a regular auctioneer is that the increments are so small. As for putting in a max and leaving it, I do that but only in regular auctions. In a regular auction I will analyze the bidding structure and try to choose a tier at which I think the next increment would be painful for a competitor and grab that level early on. One item I saw recently had a $800 tier (plus vig, of course), and I would have been pleased to own the item at that price, meaning that the next tier after that would require a buyer to commit over $1,000 to the item, which I thought was a psychological barrier that would not be broken, and which meant that I would be at over $1,300 for the item if I chose to top that, which I had no intention of doing, so I grabbed the $800 tier early in the auction and won.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by John V

I've used Gavelsnipe without a problem. I'm curious, why use a fee-based service?

I can't speak for Gavelsnipe but I know with Justsnipe (the one I use), the free version bids with 8 seconds left but the fee-based version bids with about 2-3 seconds left. In other words, the fee-based ones reduce your chances of getting outbid by another sniper.

Tabe

[T206Collector]

Originally Posted by Tabe

I know with Justsnipe (the one I use), the free version bids with 8 seconds left but the fee-based version bids with about 2-3 seconds left. In other words, the fee-based ones reduce your chances of getting outbid by another sniper.

I seriously doubt that a snipe with 8 seconds left leaves someone with enough time to put in a manual response in those final seconds. There is no added advantage to sniping any earlier than 8 seconds, because all of the sniping beyond that point will have been pre-set regardless of the snipe with 8 seconds to go.

[glchen]

Quicksnipe, which is free, allows you to snipe with 3 seconds left (although they recommend 5 or greater). What's the fewest that Gavel snipe allows?

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by glchen

Quicksnipe, which is free, allows you to snipe with 3 seconds left (although they recommend 5 or greater). What's the fewest that Gavel snipe allows?

I've watched auctions end that I have a snipe set with gavelsnipe and it always bids at right about 10 to 8 seconds left.

[glchen]

The only problem that I've had with Quicksnipe is that there was one time where the snipe did not fire, and the reason was something like "Unknown System Error." I would have won the auction if not for the misfire. I have placed hundreds if not thousands of snipes, and this has only happened once, so it's not a big deal. However, if there is an auction that I really, really want, I try to make sure to place a bid manually also at around 5-8 seconds just in case. I also remember reading in a thread about a user who changed his ebay password, and forgot to correspondingly change this on this snipe account, and therefore lost an auction that way.

[Steve D]

I completely agree with the OP's mantra of ""never feel you have to have an item" or you will pay too much". That is one of the big reasons I snipe. I place my snipes with about 5-7 seconds left in the auction. This way, I don't give anyone a chance to bid me up, and I also don't give myself an opening to up my bid once I've placed it. It does hurt when I place a bid of say $50, and see the high bid go to $50.17, but those are the breaks.

Unfortunately, many bidders don't share this mantra. They get into the "got to have it" mentality, and go crazy with their bids. It's I guess not too dissimilar to gambling.

Perhaps a good example is where a specific item is put on ebay, at a BIN price. It fails to get any takers at that price. After a few days, the seller puts the item back on ebay, this time in a straight auction starting at say, 99 cents. When the auction ends, the item gets a high bid well in excess of it's previous BIN price.

It's a case where everyone seeing the BIN price, considers it too expensive, and they have no price history to go off of to tell them otherwise. Once they see other bidders placing bids on it at or above the previous BIN price, they feel more comfortable bidding higher.

Steve

[buymycards]

One hassle with Gavel Snipe (and I'm guessing with other sniping services) is that they can't bid unless the PayPal security key is disabled. In the past several years my ebay account has been hijacked twice, so for the last 2 years I have used the PayPal/ebay security key, which changes my password every 30 seconds. It works great, but I don't feel comfortable disabling the security to place a snipe.

Rick

[Rich Klein]

And Barry IIRC usually points this out, is that if you are a seller and you don't see any bids on a good item, then you might get frustrated and close the item because you don't know that anyone has bid on your item.

We're looking at this from the buyer's view, but I'd thought I'd add a seller's view of why sniping can be a problem

Rich

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

And Barry IIRC usually points this out, is that if you are a seller and you don't see any bids on a good item, then you might get frustrated and close the item because you don't know that anyone has bid on your item.

We're looking at this from the buyer's view, but I'd thought I'd add a seller's view of why sniping can be a problem

Rich

I know; that's why I throw down a placeholder bid and set up a snipe on something I really want.

[bobbyw8469]

And Barry IIRC usually points this out, is that if you are a seller and you don't see any bids on a good item, then you might get frustrated and close the item because you don't know that anyone has bid on your item.

We're looking at this from the buyer's view, but I'd thought I'd add a seller's view of why sniping can be a problem

I had already mentioned that way back on page 2, but it got buried.....

PS, if a $1,500 card opened for 99 cents and is at $50 on the last day, I am not so sure a $40.00 placeholder bid is going to keep the seller for yanking down the auction.

[hangman62]

An ebay seller pulling his item off the block the last day or so..that always bothers me.... I dont think that should be allowed... you cant do that in any other auctions....and major/big name sportcards auction house... car auction..art show auction, little card show auction at the VFW,... that always killed me....you get the message from ebay saying " seller has removed item..go here to see the reason...and there is never a reason listed !!