Posted By:
David VarghaI think that we pretty much all agree that if your bid isn't the highest, you will lose. The one exception to this is if your snipe bid (manual or otherwise) comes in a second or two after a lower bid that causes you fail to meet the incremental bid amount necessary to win it. (Man, that is some horrible grammar.)
Here's what I mean: With 10 seconds to go, a proxy bid of $1,500 is placed. At the 7-second mark, a snipe bid of $1,499 pushes the proxy bid to its maximum. One second later a snipe comes in for $1,515. Because it does not meet the necessary requirement of being at least $25 more than the current high bid, it fails to register. This is one problem with sniping, albeit an infrequent one. The timing game becomes a big issue. Had the snipe for $1,515 come in at any time before the one for $1,499, it would have been the winner. So the gamble on timing for the sniper is does he bid a little bit earlier and risk being outbid by the manual sniping junkie or does he risk losing with the highest bid placed per the scenario above? That is the trade-off.
For you manual sniping junkies, here's the key to overcoming getting outbid at the 8-second mark and not being able to manually place another bid -- open multiple browser windows to the bid screen page and if you get outbid, place the bid in the next browser. It's as simple as that.
DavidVargha@hotmail.com