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

[theseeker]

What is the stategy behind the last second bids? Any item I'm interested in, I first evaluate and determine the maximum amount I'm willing to pay. At that point, I place my bid and usually lost out in the last seconds. And that's perfectly OK with me. If I am not on the losing end of most of my bid attempts, I feel it is a bad thing, as in my mind, I'm paying too much.

One collector mantra I never waver from is "never feel you have to have an item" or you will pay too much. And I feel this happens alot with these last second bidding wars. Feeling a need to beat that other bidder overwhelms your better judgement. If you have a bottom line price limit, where is the difference when you bid? Are these last second buyers upping there limits as they go or simply have no idea where the bidding war will take them?

[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.

[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.

[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 .

[tonyo]

Originally Posted by theseeker

"never feel you have to have an item" or you will pay too much. And I feel this happens alot with these last second bidding wars. Feeling a need to beat that other bidder overwhelms your better judgement.

Aside from the "protect against shill" angle, This is why I wait as long as possible to place my bid....to guard against the person you describe here. I don't want to give anyone a chance to keep asking themselves if they want to pay more.

I don't bid more than my self imposed limits on any of the mostly collector grade stuff I buy, but I don't want to pay more than I have to pay, either!

[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.