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

T206Collector · #1 05-18-2011, 11:52 AM

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 · #2 05-18-2011, 12:01 PM

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 · #3 05-18-2011, 12:34 PM

Quote:

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 · #4 05-18-2011, 12:50 PM

Quote:

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 · #5 05-18-2011, 01:07 PM

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 · #6 05-18-2011, 01:55 PM

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.

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