BID TO WIN. IT SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH

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Posted By: Anonymous

Don't get sniped at the last minute... bid early.

Have you ever wondered why you lost an auction in the last 10 seconds when you were the only bidder for the last week? That's probably because you only put a minimum bid and expected to bid again if someone else bid. But many successful bidders now use automated programs to automatically place their bid in the last few seconds of an auction, and snipe the auction away from you. The best way to overcome this problem is to decide the maximum amount you want to pay for the item, then bid that amount and let the automated Ebay proxy bidding system work for you. If no one else bids, then you get the item for the minimum bid. But if you do get sniped in the last few seconds, you wont miss out, or you will have the satisfaction of knowing the sniper paid more than you would have.

Simple advice. The bottom line is not to be stingy and then complain that you did not win because you got sniped.

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Posted By: BlackSoxFan..

a) Bidding early is dumb on ebay .... doesn't do you any good at all, period!!! So you should either manually snipe an auction or use a service like eSnipe.
b) Bidding high early at an auction house is equally as dumb .... although i may be shooting myself in the foot as I run one...but the only early bidding you should do at most auction houses is a basic one so that when it's time to close you can bid accordingly.
Edited to add: I'm not considering those that bid early in order to "protect their investment"
Regards,

Black Sox Fan

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Posted By: Marc S.

"b) Bidding high early at an auction house is equally as dumb...but the only early bidding you should do at most auction houses is a basic one so that when it's time to close you can bid accordingly."


At some auction houses, like Mastro, where you can straight bid - putting in a high straight bid to start essentially "boxes out" other potential bidders on a lot. By doing that - an interested bidding is significantly reducing the potential competitors in the bidding in after-hours.

This is particularly true in a Mastro-like auction, like the current Collectors' classic, where there are numerous items that will sell for well over $1,000 - but right now any Tom, Dick or Jane can get in on the bidding at $100.

~ms

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Posted By: daviddbreadman

This is crap. Anyone bidding to protect their investment is following a losing path.

If you have to bid to keep your investment high then your investment is worth less than you think. In the end you will be stuck holding the bag of cement that is too heavy to pass anymore.

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Posted By: BlackSoxFan..

I sort of consider that protecting an investment...or a potential investment..or whatever you want to call it...

Regards,

Black Sox Fan

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Posted By: daviddbreadman

yes

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Posted By: Anonymous

"I sort of consider that protecting an investment...or a potential investment..or whatever you want to call it..."
*
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PORTFOLIO. --

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Posted By: Brian E

Already got my intial Mastro bids in...no serious bidding until the end.

Brian E.

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Posted By: Chris Mc

My intent was to provide a little insight to bidding on EBAY. I was not refering to bidding at auction houses. It does hold true for EBAY.

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Posted By: T206Collector

If you bid early on an ebay auction you are throwing your money away. There is essentially no good reason ever to do this on ebay. Only an ebay shareholder or power seller would encourage such behavior on a routine basis. Those auctions you win will be at higher prices than if you had decided to snipe because people will chip away at your early high bid, trying to estimate how high your proxy will go.

I do agree, however, that if you do not bid your maximum bid and lose the auction that you have no cause for complaint -- no matter when you place you bids. But, you have a better chance of winning with a low maximum bid if you snipe than if you place your low maximum minutes, hours, days, or weeks in advance.

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Posted By: jay behrens

The namture of eBay beast is such that you do not want to make your top bid early. I guess if you a lot of money to throw away, then this works fine. Most people here are on a budget and sniping keeps down the finaly price unless you have 2 people that place "must have" bids. Bidding early with your max bid just encourages other people to play the game of let's see how close we can get to the max bid without going over. People can't do this when you snipe.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Talk about early bidding- I put my Mastro qualifying bids in shortly after it opened and I believe I was the second bidder on the N162 set at $110. I checked just for the heck of it at 1:30, some three and a half hours later, and it already has 40 bids! I can't actually believe 40 different people bid, so are people already leaving high ceiling bids and being topped in the first few hours? What kind of strategy is that?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

to me, that term always implied that the bidder had an ownership interest in the lot and was shill bidding. What I do often do is bid into a card I already have because I would not mind owning another if the price is right. I might bid 50%-60% of what I paid for the prior one and if I get the card, great, my average price into the card falls and I can sit on the duplicate for trade later on. That isn't nefarious, illogical or silly, it is good common sense, especially on a tough card.

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Posted By: Bill Stone

On most ebay auctions I wait until a few minutes before the auction closes to put in my bid --usually because I want to make sure the same or similar card hasn't recently come on the ebay market that I would rather have . I have a question about sniping services ---If I have left a bid up to $500.00 with 3 minutes left to go --and two other bids using a service each has a snipe bid of $550.00 who is going to win ---how does this work if both are using the same service? Does one service have a better record of getting in at the very last minute?

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Posted By: davidcycleback

So what's the bidders' theory against bidding the minimum bid. If you bid the minimum (and no higher), you are the only one who can get the item at the lowerst price. As your max is the minimum, you cannot be shilled up. You can raise your bid at the end if you wish.

On occasion when I've pulled an eBay item that had zero bids, I've had people complain because they wanted to bid on the item. I didn't understand, as I didn't understand why an interested party wouldn't place the minimum bid.

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Posted By: leon

Folks track other folks bids is why some don't bid early as it shows who is interested in it, which can be a bad thing. Like for instance (let me pick on Hal) if I see Hal bidding on something early it might make me bid more at the end...knowing that if he's on it it could go higher than if say.....Jay B. is on it. (I had to throw that in, that's just a joke Jay ).....regards

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Posted By: davidcycleback

The "rich collectors are watching to see what I think is bid worthy" theory reminds me of the guy in high shool who would practice his autograph during Spanish class because he was sure he was going to be famous bowler some day. Yes, there are indeed watched eBay bidders and famous bowlers, then theres the other 99.99 percent of the people in the world.

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Posted By: tobacco-r-us

A card bidder has to know the territory.
He/she may be bidding on a card that may be a scarce one in the set, or one that he/she needs to help complete a set.
To hopefully be a sucessful bidder, one has to know all the nuance, and moves of the opposing players.
It's almost like a chess game.
Just looking pretty is not good enough.

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Posted By: jay behrens

When I got serious about collecting Indian cards, I had to quit placing even tracking bids because others out there were tracking what I was bidding on and placing huge bids on items I bid on, figuring that if I was interested, then it was something worth dumping money into. I was not only buying cards at the time, photos, books, anything else related. If you go back and look at bidding histories, you start noticing the same names over and over again if you are collecting something very specialized. You eventually ahve to quit leaving early bids so as not to tip off others to desirable items.

For me, when it comes to cards of players who only appear in one set and set isn't seen often, I will not bid. I know no one is really tracking me to see what I am buying in baseball, except zach , but I have no desire to tip my hand that I am even remotely interested in a card. So, if you see me bid on something, it's something I'm interested in, but it's not a high priority item.

Leon, no worries , if I can't win an auction with a roll of quarters, I can always use it as a fist load when I attack others

Jay aka Blackheart the Attacker

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I know that there are several boxing card collectors that used to search for my name and track my bid items. That's one reason I switched to a snipe service.

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Posted By: BlackSoxFan

just to clarify...

I'm not encouraging the motivation of "protecting an investment" .... I wouldn't go so far as to consider it shill bidding if the idea is placing a high bid early to "knock out" certain bidders, although in certain instances it certainly can be considered. At the end of the day..my point still stands...bidding early is not a smart idea.

Regards,

Black Sox Fan

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I take heed to yor posts. There are more watched bidders than famous bowlers.

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Posted By: tbob

and see it place a bid for you with 35 seconds left instead of the 5 seconds you requested, which allows the outbid bidder time to regroup and manually get in another bid and beat you. This has happened twice, and I am outtathere. That service has been deleted from my favorite places.

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Posted By: tbob

You used to be able to do it, not any more. Even if I put in a large bid on the front end, I am not going to win a card. Period. Too often I have put a $250 bid in early on a $9.99 card only to get sniped and lose on a $252.50 final bid. I concur with the posts which say it is better to put in a lukewarm bid and then snipe with your max bid late.

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Posted By: Daniel Bretta

There are three ebayers that I follow their bidding because they bid early and often times find the stuff that I'm interested in that I might not find in my normal searches. I have my searches pretty refined at this point, but every once in a great while they will hit upon something that I didn't see. Often times I will find something that is listed in the wrong category or is just a poor listing and I always use a sniping service on those auctions. I picked up a framed panoramic photo of Paul Waner's 3,000 hit dinner for a whopping $22. If I had bid early on that it would have attracted attention.

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Posted By: Anonymous

My exception to the not bidding early policy is when I see an item come up that I fear the seller may have second thoughts on selling. By bidding the minimum right away I may tip my hat to someone else (although I doubt anyone follows my bidding myself and several others have similar tastes) but I also may give the seller second thoughts about removing the item from ebay.

Adam B

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Posted By: Charlie O'Neal

As someone stated in an earlier thread about the best way to throw your money away is bidding early. I honestly do not see your point of view in black and white. Sure people can eat away at your bid but most of the time they have less than 15 sec. to do it in since they wait till the last minute. My personal opinion on sniping are mixed. I will do it on occasion but will not go to such outlandious amounts that some people go to. How many time do you see an auction end double of what it should have ended b/c 2 or 3 people at the end sniped thinking that they would have the highest bid. I saw one tonight,where any other day the auction would end around $125 but 3 bidders in the end had their snipes set up to $305.00. I have no problem placing a bid 5 days in advance since it is the most I will pay of the item, sometimes I win sometimes not. It is not nearly as big of a waste of money than setting a snipe 3x's the normal price just to make sure you get it at the last sec. sicnce you do not allow yourself any margin for error.

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Posted By: identify7

Charlie: Apparently you have been fortunate in your bidding thus far. But not all of us have been so lucky. The following is an example of one of the pitfalls of bidding your max bid early, from my experience.

There was a card which I had to have, and I was willing to spend up to $750. for it, although I knew it should sell for about $500. I wasn't going to be around at the time of the bid close and I had no automatic sniper, so I bid $750 with two days left.

As the auction was drawing to a close a series of bidders kept pushing my envelope higher, eventually even over $500. With still several hours left one tenacious bidder kept bidding $10. increments to just above $650.

I guess that it was human nature to assume that my max bid was just over the horizon. But I had to have the card. And I won it at a little over $650. Of course, this was way less than my $750. max. But it was way more than if the "just over the horizon" wishful thinking of the alternate bidder did not come into play.

A last minute showdown of max bids eliminates this wishful thinking of "just a little more and its mine". And it prevents your bid from being needlessly raised.

It could be that the alternate bidder may have bid $650. no matter what - but I don't think so. I won the card and it is real and spectacular and I have no regrets. But I believe a showdown approach insures the lowest winning bid.

Maybe until you see it in "black and white" = green, you won't fully appreciate the logistics.

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Posted By: Chris Mc

We can all come up with examples that favor all our cases. I for one do not use a bid sniping service,call me folish or whatever. I put in a bid and forget about it. If I really want something I bid more. I have sat on so many auctions and bid my max bid with a few seconds left only to be outbid by someone who bid more. So what is the differnce if I bid when I first see it or bid at the end. If someone is willing to pay more than I they will win the item, bottom line.
Best for all, Chris
Go White Sox!!!