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

[doug.goodman]

I only bid in the last few seconds because :

1 - It doesn't give anybody a chance to bid again after my bid is in.

2 - It doesn't give ME a chance to bid again, if I've been outbid.

I bid the most I want to pay, and if I win it great, if I don't oh well.

I never have used a snipe program. If it's not an important enough item for me to be there at the end, than I will sometimes put in a bid as late as I can (like if the auction ends while I'm on a flight), but otherwise I just wait until the next one comes up.

Of course, this whole strategy backfired on that Sandy Koufax first career win scored scorecard last fall when the internet went down at my South American hotel 45 seconds before the auction closed. I was about to bid more than double what the winning bid ended up being.

Oh well.

I did get the scorecard from his second career win.

Doug

[glchen]

I use Quicksnipe, which is also completely free.

[AndyG09]

Gavelsnipe works for me. No cost and error free so far. Only bummer is forgetting to set the snipe. Now that is really frustrating!

[John V]

I've used Gavelsnipe without a problem. I'm curious, why use a fee-based service?

[egbeachley]

Why I use a sniping service.

About 8 years ago I bid around $200 for a nice item. It was at $20 or so with 10 minutes remaining. A new bidder bid $30 and was outbid by me, of course. Then he put in $40. Then $50. Then $60 and so on until he was the high bidder at $205 when he stopped and won it.

If I sniped, he would have probably stopped at $30 and I would have won it at the next bid increment (assuming no other bidders).

And the reason you often win at your exact price is because of the bid increments. If you put in a bid of $40.27 and another bid comes in at $40, you win it at $40.27 even though the bid increment is supposed to be $1.

[GrayGhost]

A friend on the board here turned me to Gavel Snipe a few months back, and I love it. Just set it and go. Then, if you have second thoughts you can always up your snipe or cancel it, as long as its not w/in a few minutes of auction close. I don't recall the exact time.

[ALR-bishop]

I use snipes in case I end up in the same hotel as Doug

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Why I use a sniping service.

About 8 years ago I bid around $200 for a nice item. It was at $20 or so with 10 minutes remaining. A new bidder bid $30 and was outbid by me, of course. Then he put in $40. Then $50. Then $60 and so on until he was the high bidder at $205 when he stopped and won it.

If I sniped, he would have probably stopped at $30 and I would have won it at the next bid increment (assuming no other bidders).

And the reason you often win at your exact price is because of the bid increments. If you put in a bid of $40.27 and another bid comes in at $40, you win it at $40.27 even though the bid increment is supposed to be $1.

Ed, I agree and this is another reason I submit last second bids for items I want. I was purchasing some business software a few weeks ago. I researched final auction prices from previous auctions. There happened to be a dozen sellers listed on eBay all at reasonable prices. I put in reasonable max bids and was out bid in the last minute on all of them. Finally, I decided to manually snipe one of the auctions. I chose an auction that ended at an odd time and won the auction for less than my max bids on the previous auctions and ended up saving perhaps 10%.

MWheat

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by John V

I've used Gavelsnipe without a problem. I'm curious, why use a fee-based service?

I can't speak for Gavelsnipe but I know with Justsnipe (the one I use), the free version bids with 8 seconds left but the fee-based version bids with about 2-3 seconds left. In other words, the fee-based ones reduce your chances of getting outbid by another sniper.

Tabe

[T206Collector]

Originally Posted by Tabe

I know with Justsnipe (the one I use), the free version bids with 8 seconds left but the fee-based version bids with about 2-3 seconds left. In other words, the fee-based ones reduce your chances of getting outbid by another sniper.

I seriously doubt that a snipe with 8 seconds left leaves someone with enough time to put in a manual response in those final seconds. There is no added advantage to sniping any earlier than 8 seconds, because all of the sniping beyond that point will have been pre-set regardless of the snipe with 8 seconds to go.

[glchen]

Quicksnipe, which is free, allows you to snipe with 3 seconds left (although they recommend 5 or greater). What's the fewest that Gavel snipe allows?

[PowderedH2O]

I used to bid early and often too. Never again. One night in 1999 or so, I had to go to work, so I bid on a nice autographed item that I felt was worth $150. There was a bid in at $60. So, I bid my $150 and went to work. I was now the high bidder at $65. I got home to check on my auction, and the bidder that I had outbid had bid up in $5 increments all the way to $135. It cost me $70 to place that bid. At the time I was putting myself through college delivering pizzas. I'd have made money by taking the night off and just sniping at the last second.

And I have been on the other end too. I've looked at a card and bid on it in the last couple of minutes. I see that I am outbid and all of a certain I am determined to win it. So, on a card that I put in a $150 max bid, all of a sudden I throw in a $250 max bid, or $300. And sometimes I would win. And overpay. Now, I set the amount on the snipe (I use biddingscheduler.com, btw) and I don't watch the auction. I win some, I lose some. But my bid never gets run up, and I never get caught up in the action and overbid.

Sam

[T206Collector]

There is absolutely no reason to bid on an item through ebay, either mid-auction or in the final seconds. The only people this makes happy are the sellers. If buyers would all agree to use snipe services exclusively, it would bring the prices down tremendously across the board.

The only proof you need of this phenomena is that ebay does not have its own sniping service. Heck, they haven't even done it with a fee.

In fact, in ebay's definition of "Sniping" they encourage you to put in "the maximum amount you're willing to pay for an item upfront" (see below), which is the opposite of sniping. If there was any money to be made by ebay or the seller through sniping, they would actively encourage it and participate in the market for sniping services.

Why would you ever want to signal to competing bidders or the seller that you are interested in an item with more than 3 seconds left in the auction? It's almost like going to a used car dealer and not trying to negotiate a lower price than sticker because you're comfortable with the asking price. You negotiate with a used car dealer. You snipe with ebay. Failing to do either will cost you money. Plain and simple. Irrefutable.


eBay's Definition of Sniping:
Placing a bid in the closing minutes or seconds of an auction-style listing. Any bid, placed before the listing ends, is allowed on eBay. To protect yourself from being outbid at the last moment, enter the maximum amount you're willing to pay for an item upfront, and eBay will bid automatically for you, making sure you're the high bidder until your maximum is reached. This system is sometimes called proxy bidding.

[hangman62]

Id be concerned about this possible bad ebay action - You put an early large bid on a item - $75 with 4 days to go....some yahoo comes in and bids in incrm of $5., till he passed you..and then retracts that last bid- so he now knows your high bid...and he pumped you up to your max . Im guessing it could happen ???

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by hangman62

Id be concerned about this possible bad ebay action - You put an early large bid on a item - $75 with 4 days to go....some yahoo comes in and bids in incrm of $5., till he passed you..and then retracts that last bid- so he now knows your high bid...and he pumped you up to your max . Im guessing it could happen ???

I blocked a bidder who did this on two of my auctions about a month ago...I have no idea who it was, and I sure didn't want some joker doing things that look like shill bidding on my auctions. When you see someone with multiple bid retractions like a former poster on this board (Shimikuzowa?) you just know that they're running people up to see their high bid..once they surpass it they retract their bid.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I blocked a bidder who did this on two of my auctions about a month ago...I have no idea who it was, and I sure didn't want some joker doing things that look like shill bidding on my auctions. When you see someone with multiple bid retractions like a former poster on this board (Shimikuzowa?) you just know that they're running people up to see their high bid..once they surpass it they retract their bid.

Yeah, every time I see somebody retract a bid in one of my auctions I always get concerned. #1, because it looks bad, #2, because it always seems to affect the final price negatively.

Shimikuzowa was a particularly bad case. Makes you wonder what peoples motives are sometimes. There was a guy on "The Daily Show" last night that wrote a book about "Psychopaths", and how many people who actually fit this definition are out there. Most are not serial killers but give it away with their behaviors. Many of them are very successful people.

[bobbyw8469]

The only downfall I see to sniping is, say you are looking at an item worth around $750-$1,000 (what it usually sells for as a PSA 9). The card is by SGC instead of PSA and not a widely followed fellow (no Mickey Mantle). On the last day of bidding, the card was started at 99 cents 6 days ago, and bidded up to the princely sum of $40. I have had sellers pull the auction down rather than risk giving the item away. If the item was at a more realistic level (say half of the true worth), then the seller might keep the item going. However, with no action, the seller gets cold feet and yanks the auction.

[Exhibitman]

I use auctionstealer's subscription service and have found it to be 100% reliable.

I don't know whether someone will shill me on any given auction but I know for sure that if I use a sniper they will not shill me unless they snipe their own auction. I suppose that is possible, but is it likely someone would do so? I think not. I think it is far more likely that someone would see an early bid and start pecking away at it to see how high it is.

I also put in soft early bids and set a hard ceiling snipe to cover myself later on, either to kill a BIN that I don't want to take or to make sure the seller is aware that there is interest in the item so he doesn't panic and take someone else's off-ebay offer.

Another reason I like sniping is bid groups, which allows me to set bids on a number of similar items with the later bids automatically terminated without being placed if I win the first one. Great when a seller posts two of the same card that I want.

As for precision of shilling and sniping, I know that for the items I collect I have often set a snipe that ended up within a dollar or two of the final price. I feel pretty good at handicapping results on items that interest me, so I do not have difficulty believing that someone else could analyze things and come up about where I am. The reason I see that more with Ebay than a regular auctioneer is that the increments are so small. As for putting in a max and leaving it, I do that but only in regular auctions. In a regular auction I will analyze the bidding structure and try to choose a tier at which I think the next increment would be painful for a competitor and grab that level early on. One item I saw recently had a $800 tier (plus vig, of course), and I would have been pleased to own the item at that price, meaning that the next tier after that would require a buyer to commit over $1,000 to the item, which I thought was a psychological barrier that would not be broken, and which meant that I would be at over $1,300 for the item if I chose to top that, which I had no intention of doing, so I grabbed the $800 tier early in the auction and won.