Why the last second bid....................

[HRBAKER]

If you are talking about ebay in particular a lot of it is distrust of the anonymity of the system. If I am willing to pay $300 for something that has an opening bid of .99, I am not going to put in a $300 proxy bid and subject myself to the seller or friends/accomplice of the seller to run me up to see what the max is/was. I can set a snipe and execute the bid with 5 seconds left and accomplish exactly the same thing IMO. Why risk it. It doesn't make any difference what the max I am willing to pay is, but what I have to pay in as close to an arms-length transaction as I can make up to my max.

Hope that makes sense. To me to put in your max from the start can be like telling the seller what you are willing to pay if the auction is manipulated and I think many, many on ebay are.

[mintacular]

Sniping allows you to be away from the computer at the time of the auction's end, plus prevents anyone from countering your final bid

[BearBailey]

I typically bid in advance as I am not usually around my computer when I need to be bidding. However, I know this past weekend there were a bunch of cards from a particular set I was working on going off in a similar time frame and after the first card I hoped to buy went for a few hundred less than I expected. I was able to bid on several more until I spent the amount I figured I was going to spend on 1. So I got 8 cards, and the last 7 would have been last minute bids? Many people use sniper software, but If I want something I bid, I don't sit around my computer trying to win in the last minutes?

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

If you are talking about ebay in particular a lot of it is distrust of the anonymity of the system. If I am willing to pay $300 for something that has an opening bid of .99, I am not going to put in a $300 proxy bid and subject myself to the seller or friends/accomplice of the seller to run me up to see what the max is/was.

I think Jeff pretty much nailed it. I'll give a situation that happened to me last week. I need a 1975 Topps Hank Aaron #660 in NM condition to finish my '75 Topps set. Last week I found both a pretty nice centered PSA 7 and SGC 84. I thought I would bid on both, keep the best looking one and re-sell the other.

I won the PSA card for the minimum opening bid of $30.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWNX:IT

The SGC card ended a couple days later and I had a proxy bid of $47 (why that much I don't know). Somebody ran my bid up all the way to the max. I'm not saying is was a schill, but I set a record price for this card at $47, when VCP average is only about $24. I ended up paying almost twice VCP average. If I would have sniped, this probably wouldn't have happened. Lesson learned on my part.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWNX:IT

[Exhibitman]

I snipe on Ebay so I don't get shilled up. I am sbsolutely convinced that I get items cheaper--sometimes a lot cheaper--with a snipe than with a max bid. And I never miss stuff with a snipe. I once forgot about a really major item for my collection and missed it because I didn't have a sniping program in place. Not gonna do that again.

I often wait to the last to bid on items in a regular auction because I don't necessarily know my budget allocation until I get KO'd on some items of higher priorities.

[theseeker]

As always some really insightful replies. Thanks.

This has brought me to a few other related questions. Sniper software? Any recommendations and how does it work?

Also, on several occasions I have won an auction on Ebay at exactly my maximum bid (note: I always make it a odd number total.) Could shilling possibly be this precise?

[David W]

If it's something I really want that is going to be more than $30 or so, I just snipe at the end, saves me being run up or losing the auction for $30.05.

If it's something I don't care if I win or lose, I'll just throw a bid on there for about half what I think it's worth, and I usually win about 25% or so of those items, usually cheaper items.

[D. Bergin]

As a long-time Ebay seller I'd like to think most of these accusations of shilling are just buyer paranoia. I'm sure it does go on here and there, but as someone who has run thousands of auctions over the years, I would hope I'm not in the minority in thinking my reputation is more important then running up an item a few extra dollars with a fake account.

What sniping has done is drive the price down in many areas, because not nearly as many bidding wars go on as used to. I remember the good old days of Ebay selling, before bidding ID's became private, in watching two bidding competitors who you know didn't like each other, drive up the price of an item throughout the course of the week.

As a seller, I would love for Ebay to make bidders identities public again. Would end all these constant accusations of every seller on Ebay shilling up their auctions, and might bring back a little competitive spirit between bidding rivals. Not as much as before because of sniping software, but enough to get the juices flowing, I think.

[Mrc32]

Had a snipe set for $30 on a card this past weekend. Snipe went off. I ended up winning it for $19.

Had I bid $30 a day or two before the end of the auction, I'm sure the other people who were bidding would have tried to outbid me.

Pretty much common sense.

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

I snipe on Ebay so I don't get shilled up. I am sbsolutely convinced that I get items cheaper--sometimes a lot cheaper--with a snipe than with a max bid. And I never miss stuff with a snipe. I once forgot about a really major item for my collection and missed it because I didn't have a sniping program in place. Not gonna do that again.

I often wait to the last to bid on items in a regular auction because I don't necessarily know my budget allocation until I get KO'd on some items of higher priorities.

I wholeheartedly with Adam.....for the exact same reasons. However, I use a manual snipe for the items I am really interested in.

MWheat

[bobbyw8469]

I like BIDNIP. They are very cheap (no percentage of your win, unlike some of the others), and they only debit you if you win.

[slidekellyslide]

Gavelsnipe is easy and free..I've won hundreds of items sniping with that program over the years. I snipe for a couple of reasons...one is because I don't want to get my bid run up over the course of 7 days, and two is because sometimes I forget about an item on ebay...many times I'll win an item that I completely forgot about and am thankful that I had set a snipe on it...case in point the other day I won a lot of 20 Casey Stengel press photos for the opening bid and had completely forgotten about that lot..I set my snipe right away when I saw it listed.

[Big Ben]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

If you are talking about ebay in particular a lot of it is distrust of the anonymity of the system. If I am willing to pay $300 for something that has an opening bid of .99, I am not going to put in a $300 proxy bid and subject myself to the seller or friends/accomplice of the seller to run me up to see what the max is/was. I can set a snipe and execute the bid with 5 seconds left and accomplish exactly the same thing IMO. Why risk it. It doesn't make any difference what the max I am willing to pay is, but what I have to pay in as close to an arms-length transaction as I can make up to my max.

Hope that makes sense. To me to put in your max from the start can be like telling the seller what you are willing to pay if the auction is manipulated and I think many, many on ebay are.

Well said. This is the strategy that I use. One thing that I have noticed recently on EBay with collectibles other than baseball cards, is a seller who has a low minimum starting bid at the beginning of the auction and then raises the minimum bid drastically in the final days. After I saw this, I lost any interest that I might have had with the item.

[Leon]

I moved this from the post war category as it's more general in nature and others might have thoughts on it too. Already some good points given. And to answer another question, I personally use Gavelsnipe but there are plenty of auction sniping s/w's out there. Also, we even have sniping built into our Grandslambids venue....when there is a need .