ebay buy it now pricing

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Posted By: T206Collector

...and you would be hard pressed to prove that many many T206 auctions do not end with a sniper. Even if it is only 50% or 25% of all T206 auctions, that is a significant amount of sniping activity. The point is that a large number of ebay auctions for pre-war cards end with snipes. And if that is the case, then you should not be ending auctions early.

But my other point is always that early bids are absolutely and completely without any merit, unless you want other people to see what you're bidding on or you just want to give money to the seller.

I often watch items that I own to guage value, with no intent to bid. I just want to see if a seller can get a certain price for something.

Here's a random lot that just ended.
Ended: Mar-06-06 10:44:00 PST
Start time: Feb-27-06 10:44:00 PST

http://cgi.ebay.com/LOT-OF-TEN-1909-T-206-TABBACO-CARDS_W0QQitemZ8772693553QQcategoryZ86844QQrdZ1QQc mdZViewItem

And here's the bidding history.
User ID Bid Amount Date of bid

tbarlage ( 812) US $83.65 Mar-06-06 10:43:54 PST
mybuddyinc ( 285) US $82.82 Mar-06-06 10:43:54 PST
mustang31585 ( 94) US $76.89 Mar-06-06 10:39:59 PST
morr6486 ( 0 ) US $75.00 Mar-05-06 21:35:40 PST
bagger77 ( 3334) US $73.12 Mar-06-06 08:16:32 PST
vtechfan ( 173) US $68.00 Mar-06-06 06:48:01 PST
vtechfan ( 173) US $60.00 Mar-06-06 06:47:23 PST
cwjorge ( 37) US $55.00 Mar-04-06 19:27:03 PST
waynea432 ( 61) US $50.00 Feb-28-06 17:11:29 PST
sac.fly ( 272) US $50.00 Mar-04-06 08:47:46 PST
mjhbear ( 142) US $43.22 Feb-27-06 18:19:24 PST

There were two snipes on this rather mundane T206 auction, with 6 seconds left, and the winner was tbarlage. All of the rest of the bids were totally irrelevant and only served to drive the price up for the eventual winners. In fact, vtechfan did multiple early bids, which is perhaps the highest form of irrational bidding.

And now I've learned that bagger77, who has a ton of feedback signaling his frequent participation on ebay, likes to bid on T206 lots early, so I can follow him now in my searches and let him do the work for me. Want to see some cool pre-war card auctions that are still out there, check these out:

http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidItems&userid=bagger77&sort=3&page=1&rows=25&completed=0&all=1

I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, or out Bagger77 in particular, but I like to imagine a world where no one bids on an ebay auction until the final seconds, because in that world, the bidders truly save money.