Is snipe bidding killing the hobby?

[David Atkatz]

I snipe for one reason only: To prevent other bidders from deciding, after seeing my bid, to bid again. By sniping I can't beat anyone who has already decided to bid more than I did, but I can prevent someone from deciding then to pay more than he thought he would.
As far as I'm concerned, it makes no sense whatever not to snipe.

[travrosty]

others snipe knowing they cant enter another bid, like you, so they are like you and entering their max snipe. if you enter the max bid right at the end or the beginning , you will win it or not depending on whether someone wanted it more than you or not.

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by David Atkatz

I snipe for one reason only: To prevent other bidders from deciding, after seeing my bid, to bid again. By sniping I can't beat anyone who has already decided to bid more than I did, but I can prevent someone from deciding then to pay more than he thought he would.
As far as I'm concerned, it makes no sense whatever not to snipe.

+1

[cfhofer]

You are spot on Drcy!

Let's be honest...we don't snipe bid to just avoid "shill" bids. We snipe bid to avoid "ANY" competing bid, even legitimate ones. It is exploitation of a flaw in eBay's auction system. Correct me if I'm wrong but it is the only auction house in history to function this way.

The purpose of an auction is to sell an item at fair market value. How does a flurry of snipe bids in the final 10 seconds determine fair market value? Now there are some items, say a 1968 Topps Nolan Ryan PSA 7, that the market value is pretty well established. But how much should someone pay for an 1894 Varsity Yale Football Pach Bros photo? Our hobby needs the back-and-forth of bids to determine that. That is healthy for our hobby.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by cfhofer

You are spot on Drcy!

Let's be honest...we don't snipe bid to just avoid "shill" bids. We snipe bid to avoid "ANY" competing bid, even legitimate ones. It is exploitation of a flaw in eBay's auction system. Correct me if I'm wrong but it is the only auction house in history to function this way.

The purpose of an auction is to sell an item at fair market value. How does a flurry of snipe bids in the final 10 seconds determine fair market value? Now there are some items, say a 1968 Topps Nolan Ryan PSA 7, that the market value is pretty well established. But how much should someone pay for an 1894 Varsity Yale Football Pach Bros photo? Our hobby needs the back-and-forth of bids to determine that. That is healthy for our hobby.

Heritage Auctions owns Gavelsnipe.com and you can bid/snipe (maybe) in Heritage from their sniping service.

And, to me, the flurry of snipe bids is true market. (unless they are shills). I only put in snipes ( I snipe 98% of the time, the other 2% I want the adrenaline rush) when I want something, and absent fraud, others do the same thing. How can that not be true market? In reality no auction in the world has 100% of interested buyers in their auction. I bid in a ton of auctions, ebay and otherwise....and help run a small auction company, so have my own views..... Fun debate.....

[cfhofer]

Leon,

It is a fun debate. Obviously there is no definitive answer. Heritage has a 5-minute rule on Internet auctions.

But let me ask you this, since you run a small auction company. If eBay gave you (as the seller) the option for a "10-minute rule" at an extra 1% would you take advantage of it?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by cfhofer

Leon,

It is a fun debate. Obviously there is no definitive answer. Heritage has a 5-minute rule on Internet auctions.

But let me ask you this, since you run a small auction company. If eBay gave you (as the seller) the option for a "10-minute rule" at an extra 1% would you take advantage of it?

I am not sure I would ever want to pay more for ebay services. They are kind of rich right now, imo. But I would have to consider it, financially, even if my personal bias is to hate more fees. At the end of the day their invoice, If I could make more than I am spending, I would do it.

And no, the 10 minute ebay rule programming would not be difficult to do, with respect to everything else. I have been involved in a few auction programming projects on the sales/marketing side of the business..(I am not technical but have seen what can be done and how long things take, in general)


,

[drcy]

Clearly people place snipe bids to get lower prices. People in this very thread have said that. So clearly sniping lowers prices. And it's not just a matter of shilling (which I don't deny is a legitimate problem), but people here have said they do it due to other legitimate bidders. They believe other bidders (and I'm talking about honest ones) will bid more and raise prices if they see their bids in the middle of the auction as opposed to when they're snuck in at the end and don't have a chance to react. Call it psychological bidding if you wish or people bidding more when they're emotionally invested in an item they've bid on or being irrationally exuberant or having more time to think if they are willing to place an extra bid, but that's a part of how people bid. People are psychological animals not robots and often will bid more than they would have if they someone has out bid them. Remove shilling and have only legitimate honest bidders participating in the bidding process and people would still place snip bids to get lower prices. The reason why auction houses have 10 or 15 minute rules is because bidders will reconsider what they're willing to bid and sometimes raise their bids when given a few minutes to think about it-- something that snipe bidding eliminates and is designed to eliminate. The idea that sniping has no effect on final pricing is, quite simply, wrong-- and I'm talking here about auctions where there is no shilling.

[doug.goodman]

Originally Posted by David Atkatz

I snipe for one reason only: To prevent other bidders from deciding, after seeing my bid, to bid again. By sniping I can't beat anyone who has already decided to bid more than I did, but I can prevent someone from deciding then to pay more than he thought he would.
As far as I'm concerned, it makes no sense whatever not to snipe.

There it is, in a nutshell.

If you don't want to be "sniped" then bid a higher amount. Easy.

[drcy]

As noted, many bidders who lose an auction by a last second bid would have placed a higher bid if given a second chance. If bids were placed earlier, they would have had the second chance, but with snipe bids they have no second chance. This explains why snipe bids can and do lower prices.

If someone places a snipe bid of $200 and it's won by someone else at $205, he may say "Aw shoot, I wanted that. I would have paid $210 for that. I may have even paid $220. I wish I could go back and raise my max bid." If there were no snipe bids, but the $205 (or higher) bid by his opponent placed a day before the auction's or even 10 minutes before the end, he has the chance to say "Aw shoot, I want this so I'm going to raise my bid to $220." That's exactly how snipe bids can and do result in lower prices. And that's exactly why auction houses have 10 or fifteen minute rules. No major auction house has a fixed ending time with snipe bidding-- because they know many bidders will raise their previous max bids if given 10 or fifteen minutes to reconsider, and they know their 10 or 15 minute chance to reconsider system results in higher final prices.

In a 7 day auction, a bidder may have a set-in-stone, unwavering mind, "that's what's in my budget" $1,000 max bid for 6 days 23 hours and 55 minutes, but when he sees the bid go to $1,010 with five minutes left he may say "Aw what the hell, I'll go to $1,100." If the $1,100 bid isn't high enough and there's two minutes left he may say "Okay, I'll bid $1,250, but no higher." If the two bidders had place snipe bids, the auction would have ended at $1,010.

[murphusa]

well it can't be killing the hobby, look at how many collectors are using it.

[perezfan]

If anything, it's helping the hobby.

I don't see anything remotely detrimental

Now if eBay finds some way to prohibit sniping (which I wouldn't put past them), that WOULD be a blow to the hobby!

[drcy]

I don't think it's "killing the hobby"-- that was an over the top question--, but it does help explain why there are fewer auctions and more BINS on eBay. Bidders like the lower prices caused by snipe auctions, but sellers don't. Sniping is also why sellers will more often these days end auctions early to accept an offers.

Realize that eBay may some day realize that snipe bids costs them money and add a 5 minute (or similar) rule. It may not be a repetitively resetting clock as with the big auction houses, but perhaps just a one time five or ten minutes added on when there's a last millisecond snipe bid to give the other other bidders chances to place one last additional bid. As someone in this thread said, he's surprised they hasn't already done it.

[vintagesportscollector]

Two weeks ago I had an amusing, but fortunate, snipe incident. I usually place auto snipes on about half the items I bid on, and the other half I manually snipe if I am not sure on the amount I want to bid and if I know I am going to be around to watch the auction end.

There was an item that I really really wanted that I figured would go for around $50. For whatever reason I didn’t choose to auto snipe and planned to just be around and watch the end and place a last second bid. My bid was going to be $111.11 just to place some odd amount, that we all often do. I figured that amount should win it because it was an odd item in my niche which I figured wouldn’t attract much interest.

As I watched the end of the auction with about 4 mins to go, I noticed my internet connection was getting really slow and spotty. The current high bid was about $25. Fearing my internet was slow, I placed my bid at about 40 seconds left…and wouldn’t you know the max bid for the current high bidder was also $111.11, but he had bid first so I was still losing. Go figure. Since I had placed it with 40 seconds left, I had time to nudge it up, and I won the item. If I had placed my auto snipe with the amount I figured would be enough to win, or waited to the last second to manually bid, I would have lost. That’s called dumb luck.