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

[Steve D]

I completely agree with the OP's mantra of ""never feel you have to have an item" or you will pay too much". That is one of the big reasons I snipe. I place my snipes with about 5-7 seconds left in the auction. This way, I don't give anyone a chance to bid me up, and I also don't give myself an opening to up my bid once I've placed it. It does hurt when I place a bid of say $50, and see the high bid go to $50.17, but those are the breaks.

Unfortunately, many bidders don't share this mantra. They get into the "got to have it" mentality, and go crazy with their bids. It's I guess not too dissimilar to gambling.

Perhaps a good example is where a specific item is put on ebay, at a BIN price. It fails to get any takers at that price. After a few days, the seller puts the item back on ebay, this time in a straight auction starting at say, 99 cents. When the auction ends, the item gets a high bid well in excess of it's previous BIN price.

It's a case where everyone seeing the BIN price, considers it too expensive, and they have no price history to go off of to tell them otherwise. Once they see other bidders placing bids on it at or above the previous BIN price, they feel more comfortable bidding higher.

Steve

[buymycards]

One hassle with Gavel Snipe (and I'm guessing with other sniping services) is that they can't bid unless the PayPal security key is disabled. In the past several years my ebay account has been hijacked twice, so for the last 2 years I have used the PayPal/ebay security key, which changes my password every 30 seconds. It works great, but I don't feel comfortable disabling the security to place a snipe.

Rick

[Rich Klein]

And Barry IIRC usually points this out, is that if you are a seller and you don't see any bids on a good item, then you might get frustrated and close the item because you don't know that anyone has bid on your item.

We're looking at this from the buyer's view, but I'd thought I'd add a seller's view of why sniping can be a problem

Rich

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

And Barry IIRC usually points this out, is that if you are a seller and you don't see any bids on a good item, then you might get frustrated and close the item because you don't know that anyone has bid on your item.

We're looking at this from the buyer's view, but I'd thought I'd add a seller's view of why sniping can be a problem

Rich

I know; that's why I throw down a placeholder bid and set up a snipe on something I really want.

[bobbyw8469]

And Barry IIRC usually points this out, is that if you are a seller and you don't see any bids on a good item, then you might get frustrated and close the item because you don't know that anyone has bid on your item.

We're looking at this from the buyer's view, but I'd thought I'd add a seller's view of why sniping can be a problem

I had already mentioned that way back on page 2, but it got buried.....

PS, if a $1,500 card opened for 99 cents and is at $50 on the last day, I am not so sure a $40.00 placeholder bid is going to keep the seller for yanking down the auction.

[hangman62]

An ebay seller pulling his item off the block the last day or so..that always bothers me.... I dont think that should be allowed... you cant do that in any other auctions....and major/big name sportcards auction house... car auction..art show auction, little card show auction at the VFW,... that always killed me....you get the message from ebay saying " seller has removed item..go here to see the reason...and there is never a reason listed !!

[bobbyw8469]

Usually on those car auctions, they all have a reserve. Usually the seller is on site to determine whether the reseve should be lifted or not (I am talking about the vintage cars on TV, ie Jackson Barrett). If Ebay didn't have such a stigmatism involving reserves, I am sure we would see more of them on cards with the low following/high value.....