Take Cover - Snipers Out in Force!
 

I've been looking for an R303 Ted Williams for the last year and a half, so I was following the ending of this one closely on eBay.
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=230351390437

with 10 seconds to go, the high bid was $160 and what ensued was an impressive sniping display.
5 different bidders submitted snipes that registered and the card sold for $726. Because the card is seldom available (I have seen two others offered - one with a stain and a tear was offered as part of a lot and the other, an SGC 80 sold for $1500) there is minimal relevant historical data which caused quite a bit of uncertainty as to the valuation. I'd imagine that each of us who sniped thought our bid was certainly high enough to take it.

Most auctions nowadays get sniped, but with VCP you can usually tell pretty closely what the end result will be for most cards; this was an interesting exception.

Matt
 

I was one of your "outsniped" brethren on this one.
Jeff

Jeff - I figured most if not all of the action was from other board members :)

They were really out in force last night on the T210 Series 7 and 8 cards. The cards I won I reversed strategies and put a high, high bid on and tried to hang on. It appears some of the cards are rarer in their series than others because some really went a lot higher than I assumed they would.:eek:

high bid early
 

Bob, lately I have taken the approach of putting in a high early bid and hopefully discouraging snipers who may think it is really going to go high. Works about the same, however.

Another R303A Williams went off overnight - this one had some heavy wear at the bottom. Interestingly, it ended within dollars of the last one, but the bids where much more uniform, with 7 bids at $500 or above.
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=130319876421
http://i.ebayimg.com/12/!BWzUi2wBmk~...nYLKQ~~_12.JPG

Matt, Jeff,
I also was "outsniped" on both of these R303 Williams. I feel that I should have put in a higher snipe on the first auction in late June due to the uncertainty, and as you stated, I thought I had the bid with my snipe. This R303 last night, I was "outsniped" at the final seconds...Interesting the card went for a similar price, although I thought the condition was inferior to the first. Building my own "VCP" for this card.

Dave

All day long I hear people tell me how bad our economy is, and then I turn on my computer and watch my bids get blown out of the water again. This week was brutal! I collect mostly oddball stuff from the 30s to the 60s, and I'm not even coming close to winning items I could have easily picked up for a fair price a couple years ago ...

R303 Williams
 

I have long since reached the conclusion that there are several people who want this card worse than I do.