sniping

[Archive]

Posted By: scott

being new to bidding for cards on ebay and after various posts on the subject...what's your opininion on using such a service.i've bought many items of non collectable nature on ebay such as outdoor gear or history books and part of the fun was bidding .granted...for cards its very competitive to say the least but it seems like somethings lost by using such a service.i guess i'm old school in thought and yearn for the old days ...pregrading days,huge $, etc.
thanks,
scott

[Archive]

Posted By: David H

exactly.

[Archive]

Posted By: Chad

But sometimes I can't get to a computer at the end of an auction. I lost a Billiken card the otehr day because of it, and I don't want it to happen again. So I'm going to use the snipe function for auctions I can't bid on live. Besides, anymore, I find at the end of the auction I can't keep up manually with all the snipe bids coming in. I can't beat them, so I guess I'm joining them--on occasion at least. I'm ok with that. I really prefer the auctions with the ten minute rules, etc. so I don't have to worry about these last second shenanigans. Ah well.

--Chad

[Archive]

Posted By: Julie

auction's end, that I started using a sniping service. With a few weird exceptions,I've been using one ever since.

Now when you put down sniping, you do mean SERVICES, I hope, because, as far as bidding is concerned, sniping is the only was to go. Don' you see,
"By the time they see you," (as Stealthbid says) "it's too late."

You don't always win, but you win much more often when you catch other bidders off guard, by surprise, and they don't have time to regroup. If you didn't snipe high enough (maybe because you didn't have the money--sure does happen to me...), it's a little less painful than doing it yourself and losing...

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

it is superb. I use it for everything. Not only does a snipe service save you a ton of time but it often saves you a lot of money because you don't have a high bid there for people (shills) to peck away at.

Adam

You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.--Blazing Saddles

[Archive]

Posted By: scott

..i realize using a service is probably the way to go.i'm actually considering one myself even though i hate to do it.it was nice at one time bidding on an item that ended during the day when most people worked and i had off,having that advantage.times have changed and getting back into the hobby now is definately different.but still fun.
scott

[Archive]

Posted By: tbob

The practicality of it is that you CAN'T win wire to wire anymore and if you put in a big bid on the front end, as Adam says, you get pecked to death, even if you win. The only reason I see to put in a reasonable bid early is because you might have some card buddies who "owe you one" and will stay off a card you want.

[Archive]

Posted By: Will

I am missing something here. What is the advantage of sniping over just placing a max bid? I don't have to pay to bid, I still have to figure out what I am willing to pay for the item and I don't have to watch it. If many are sniping, how many last second bids are accepted? Of course, if my max is higher than any sniped maxes, I still win. Don't quite see the point (yet).
Will

[Archive]

Posted By: Glenn

Will,

I'm basically in agreement with you. I've never used a sniping service, and I often place my max bid several days out (and occasionally win). As far as I can see, sniping services only exist because of a) shill bidding or the fear thereof and b) people's willingness to pay substantially more than what an item is otherwise (i.e., minus their own bid) likely to go for. I tend not to think that shill bidding is quite as prevalent as most others here seem to believe, but even if I'm grossly underestimating its frequency sniping would still be of negligible benefit for me since my bids are always on the low end of what an item is "worth". So if someone does engage in shill bidding they're not so much driving up the price I'd have to pay as they are replacing the bidders who would otherwise have done the same thing to me.

[Archive]

Posted By: will watson

i'm torn on the issue of sniping services. i've never used one, mainly because i trust myself to place a bid with 5 seconds left more than an automated bid service. many times, snipes don't go through.

here's a good example of why sniping services oftentimes save you money:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=5205070201

the underbidder drove the price up from the opening bid of $9 to $15, after the winning bidder's initial bid was placed. if the high bidder would have sniped, he probably would have won it for $9.50. on the flip side, i think the argument that "your max bid is the most you'll pay for an item, so if you get driven up to that price, you have no reason to complain" is a valid one as well.

[Archive]

Posted By: Glenn

60 people looked at the card. Don't you think some of them would have bid on it if it had been stuck at $9? Maybe the winning bidder could have won it for $14, but I don't think $9.50 is very likely.

[Archive]

Posted By: Tim Newcomb

The actuarial types can weigh in and correct me if I'm wrong, but everything I've read and heard suggests that widespread sniping depresses the final hammer price of auctions -- that's in aggregate, of course, not necessarily on any given auction. This is mostly for the reasons mentioned by other posters-- underbidders driving you up to your max, and so on-- but also for psychological reasons.

Consider this: I see a $50 item of some interest to me (not something I HAVE to have), with three days left and decide to bid on it. If the current bid is at already at $35, I'll tend to bid $36-40, or maybe go ahead and bid my $50 and move on. If the current bid is at $5, I'm very unlikely to bid my $50 limit. I'm much more likely to bid $6 or $7, maybe $10 on it (in other words, the same amount higher in both cases) and then see where it is on closing day, hoping to snipe it for a bargain. This may not be rational, since I know the value of the item in each case. But I do it anyway. The last thing I want to do is a chase an early high bid. When I sell on ebay I'm always delighted when my items attract early bidding.

Finally, all the auction houses have some version of the "6 PM rule"-- you have to place a bid on an item before 6 PM if you want to bid after 6 PM-- this basically prevents hidden sniping and ensures that most lots will have several bids already going into the last few hours. The final frenzy starts from a much higher baseline.

As I understand it, these are basic principles of auctioneering: the more bids you have early, the higher the final price will go. Auctioneers don't want their bidders taking just one shot at the end--they want people on the hook with a bid, emotionally invested, and tempted to go "just one more" increment. Sniping helps remove that temptation to some extent.

Plus the convenience can't be beat. No more incurring the wrath of Significant Other when you jump up from dinner to check that auction. Sure, the snipe will fail to go through once in a while, but very seldom in my experience. I love it!

Tim

[Archive]

Posted By: Glenn

If anyone else is interested, I've just located what appears to be an excellent paper on the topic by Ariely, Ockenfels, & Roth (2002).

[Archive]

Posted By: Anson

Some of these services are nice if you can't babysit the auctions. However, don't put too much trust in them. If you're good, you can generally outsnipe an esniper manually.

[Archive]

Posted By: Chuck R

Not sure what you mean by outsniping. I generally use esnipe for everything. It's only failed once in a year and a half. If it is something that I have to have (something ultra rare,that is) then I will make a point of being there at the end and manually putting a bid in myself just in case my ensipe bid fails. My redundant esnipe bid in this case also backs me up if I do something stupid manually.

As far as outsniping goes, it really is a free-for-all in the last 10 seconds or so. Everyone just throws in their best shot and lets the chips fall. There's no time to manually react if you're outbid. For that reason, it's a little better to come in just before the other bids. I saw this happen just the other day (not to me). Check out this auction...if the underbidder had come in five seconds sooner he would have won it at $166.00 because the other guy's bid of $166.66 wouldn't have made the next bid increment:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=7161371343>

[Archive]

Posted By: Dave

I almost always snipe when I bid. I don't use a service though, just hit the confirm button when there are less than 10 seconds left. I have high speed, and this will get in on time. I also open two IE windows, one to place the bid, and the other to refresh on my card of interest.

I synchronize my PC clock with NISTIME, available at http://tf.nist.gov/service/its.htm. This makes my PC time accurate within a small fraction of a second to actual, which matches ebay. So, I can watch the countdown clock on my own machine.

Someone asked why not just put in a high bid up front? That gives the other buyers a chance to decide that they really can affort another $10 or $20. By sniping, it changes the auction to one where everyone opens their envelope at the end, and the high bid wins.

[Archive]

Posted By: Julie

my sniping service has only failed me once in 3 years..and I'm not always home on Sunday, which is when most auctions close.

[Archive]

Posted By: Brian McQueen

I agree with David on this one. Bidding a high amount early on is almost like "showing your hand" to your competitors. If they know what you're doing, they'll have several days to decide whether or not to try and bid higher or chip away at your max bid. Significant bidding early on also alerts others to who might be wanting the card in general and what competition you might be facing.

As far as a sniping service is concerned, if I really want the card, I will NEVER, EVER let a machine replace me in the final few seconds of an auction. There are too many ways in which these things can fail. For instance, did you know that if you change your Ebay ID, you have to change your configuration on your sniping service as well? Several people I know haven't remembered that and have lost out on cards they really wanted.

Anson brings up a good point too. The more savvy bidders out there can render the sniping services useless. Hard to explain but one thing I can say is that its really hard to capture the "pace" of an auction with one of these services. You may set your snipe properly and whatnot, but subsequent bidding at any point leading up to the final minute could carry the value past your snipe and you might not even realize it since you'd be away from your computer.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bob Rousseau

The thing that got me to start using a sniping service was when a group of nearly simultaneous Ebay auctions was happening within a very short window of time- I think it was in fact the "Florida Find" of T206 cards a few years back- and the auctions were all spaced to end within probably 10 seconds of each other. In part because I was using a semi-old computer with (gasp!) dial up, and in part because I think so many people were bidding on those, I found Ebay kept freezing up on me. It was MADDENING! So- I decided I was going to let someone else's computer system do the last minute scramble for me. I was also tired of the 3 a.m. end times on some auctions.

I've used a sniping service for easily 200-300 auctions and it malfunctioned on me only a total of about two times. I can't remember the one I used first- but they got hacked into briefly, as I recall, and I switched over to stealthbid, who I've used ever since and again, they might have malfunctioned on all of one auction.

Since someone mentioned the bidding battle as being the 'fun' part- for me now, the fun is knowing my snipe bid is already in and then , in the final minute of an auction, watching the auction page and refreshing it every second waiting for my bid to show up without having to hurredly type in my password, etc. Probably the only ones to come after are using a different sniping service. And also, another fun part for me is having more dollars left over to spend on more items because of what I've saved using a sniping service.

If you're fixated on an item and don't want to use a sniping service, I guess it comes down to- Do you want the band aid ripped off at once or gradually? If it's worthwhile, you KNOW you're going to have competition- with people sniping and using sniping services, you get to find out all of a sudden in the last seconds if your Big Kahuna bid is good enough. When people don't snipe or use sniping services, they can just chip away at your bid for days. If you don't want the Bandaid ripped off at all, make one of what I call the "If You Bid Higher Than This, You're Absolutely Crazy" bid and hope for the best.

[Archive]

Posted By: Anonymous

Brian I have to disagree with you on your statement that "savvy bidders" can render sniping services useless. One of the main reasons I use esnipe is that I don't want to be caught up in the emotions of leap frogging with someone in the last minute. I set a max amount I'm willing to pay for something, set it to go within the last 10 seconds and let it fly: if I win I win, if not, I'll live. When I'm selling, I love it when the "savvy" bidders get into the pace of the auction in the last minute.

[Archive]

Posted By: Brian McQueen

Chuck, that's a good point although the type of auction that I'm referring to is one of those "must have" type of items. For those, I would not use a sniping service period as I'll adjust my bid according to the auction's pace. I suppose in this case, I wouldn't even have a "max bid". Personally, there's not a lot out there that fits into the "must have" realm for me anymore. Actually VERY little would fall into this catagory but when something does show up, I go after it with a "just get the card" attitude, not a "This is my max bid and I won't go over it" attitude. And if I want the card bad enough, I'll figure out a way to be in front of my computer at auction's end so that I can go after the card myself. It seems that there's a million things that can go wrong with those. I don't care if it is only one out of every 300 auctions that malfunctions, on a card I really want I'm not going to take the chance that that "one malfunction" occurs during my auction.

[Archive]

Posted By: Julie

and you can have your sniping service rasise your bid to adjust to the "auction's
pace." A sniping service will bid as high as you tell it to--in fact, I recently had my sniping service bid 2,500 dollars more than I HAD (I figured I could have stolen the money somewhere if I had to--I didn't have to).

To put your NAME there among the bidders is the worst piece or foolishness there is. You'll just alert others that a serious bidder is involved, and all their snipe bids will double!

I must report that Stealthbid will NOT change or remove or ANYTHING concerning a bid during the five minutes before the auction closes. That was the one occasion where I had to snipe myself recently. I got home just before the auction ended, and had an e-mail from stealthbid saying "you are losing this aucton!" (they do that)--meaning someone's actual bid was higher than my snipe bid. The message was 2 hours old! I looked at the stealthbid page, and the "5 minutes before" thing had already started, so I went right to the aucrion page and sniped, and won the card.