As you said, you just have a lot more casual attitude about auctions than most people do.
I don't recall saying I had a casual attitude about auctions. I'm actually pretty damn serious about it.
But I made my first Ebay transaction in 1997. I guess I've just been doing it long enough to understand the concept, although it's a very simple concept that I like to think I'd explained clearly enough thus far....
People always come out of auctions having paid more than they had expected to or originally desired to.
I disagree.
Idiots may come out of auctions having paid more than they had expected to or originally desired to.
Why would you bid MORE than you think an item is worth, just for the satisfaction of beating the other guy out? That's one of the silliest things I've ever heard of. Oh, I know all the morons on Ebay do it, but do you want to be one of those people?
I hope not
If there isn't much deviation from your "maximum price," you'll likely be willing to cough up a little bit more for the added satisfaction of beating out someone else to own the item; at least until it becomes too much. Granted, this isn't the wisest thing to do, but it happens, and it's very hard to account for that.
That says maybe, and as I said in my prior post, many people have advocated a switch to something where the auction extends by a few minutes after each bid to make time for counter-bids, but Ebay ain't budging on it, so you have to play by their rules, or you will lose, as you have lost already.
Their rule is really quite simple:
Bid the maximum you are willing to pay the first time.
Go over the scenario in his head. You say you're willing to bid $50, but then you say you'd be willing to up it a little bit. Consider that you may have to up it, and up it NOW. Decide that if someone else were to hit you for $51 or $52, then you're willing to go to $54, but if they go $55, you're out.
So instead of making your bid $50, make it $54. It's that simple!
Knowing your opponent's preferred cost is important both for determining whether or not you'll put in the time and effort to bid, and to size up the competition for future auctions.
You need to let proxy bidding work for you. It takes all of 3 seconds to bid on an item--you put in a price, you put in your username, you put in your password, you hit submit, you confirm your bid, that's it. What is this time and effort you're so worried about?
If something consistently goes for $100, then it's too much for me and I'll not waste the energy on them. Unfortunately ebay doesn't help much in the way of price information.
As I said above, you can use the "search completed auctions" feature of the advanced search to locate recent auctions and see what an item has been selling for.
What I meant with my $50 / $70 scenario was this: Say Item X sold for $50 to Person Y. However, the maximum price Person Y would pay for said item is $70 (or at least his maximum bid was $70). I want to bid on another auction for Item X myself. I look at the $50 selling price and think the estimated going price was $50, and follow the item, bid etc. But since there's a good chance of another Person Y competing with me for Item X, I don't stand a chance of getting the item unless I bid $70+. So I bid $50 on several Item X auctions and lose all of them. Not knowing that the real ceiling on Item X is $70 has wasted me a lot of time and energy. Had I known people bid on Item X for $70 I could make an informed decision on whether it was worth it to me to bid $70 for Item X or whether to downgrade and look at cheaper Item Y instead.
If you want to be able to see fixed prices, then you probably shouldn't be bothering with Ebay. I see what you're saying, but that's exactly how it works. If you're only willing to pay $50 and everyone else is willing to pay $70, then you are going to have to wait out all the people who are willing to pay $70. This is capitalism at it's truest.
Real auctions (at least the ones I've been to, and the ones most people traditionally identify with) continue until only one person is left, the person willing to pay the most. That's how it should be.
That is
exactly how it functions.
In ebay auctions the timeframe is basically the last minute of the auction, barring any abnormally high proxy bids, and whoever gets in the right bid at the right time wins; i.e. no room to make last minute decisions or make price rebuttals like traditional auctions.
You think that, but only because you aren't listening to what I have told you.
THERE IS NO RIGHT BID AT THE RIGHT TIME.
IF YOU BID $100 THE VERY FIRST SECOND AND I BID $8 THE VERY LAST, YOU WIN! YOU!
Yes, there is no room to make a last minute decision or a "price rebuttal."
The catch is that you have PROXY BIDDING in place to do that FOR YOU so if you just picked the maximum price YOU were willing to pay the first time, you wouldn't have to worry about it.
THINK ABOUT A "TRADITIONAL AUCTION":
An item is placed on the block. You decide how much you are willing to pay for it, and you start bidding. If someone keeps outbidding you, you keep counter-bidding until you have reached the maximum you decided on. If the other person keeps upping the bid, you are going to give up.
You pick a maximum in advance.
Ebay works exactly the same way!
You aren't SUPPOSED to bid in real-time on Ebay. You are supposed to pick that maximum and all that happens in between is handled by proxy bidding! It is there for a reason! USE IT!!!!!
Granted there are many occasions where the man simply willing to pay the most wins, but it's very frustrating not to have the time or the information to decide whether or not you may be willing to go over his top to win the item and beat him.
The man willing to pay the most ALWAYS wins.
Unless YOU screw up and don't set your maximum bid high enough. You don't have to sit and wait. Decide what the item is worth. Bid that much and no more. If you win, you win.
I heard yahoo auctions extends auctions by several minutes every time there's a last minute bid; though that is also time consuming, it's a more true to form rule... too bad the selection on yahoo is fairly poor.
It's only necessary b/c nobody is willing to rely on the proxy bidding system that makes it work. Ebay doesn't give us that option, and in a way, I'm glad of it.
As a newbie on ebay, it just seems like I'm totally in the dark about all the little rules and tricks of the game that exist there.
The only so-called rules and tricks that you are in the dark about are ones that DO NOT EXIST! It is a simple auction. Nothing more. Don't try to delude yourself into believing that there is some trick to timing or sniping or scamming.
There isn't!
If it were as simple as you insisted, there wouldn't be
whole books telling people how to beat out other people on ebay (maybe i should get one of those
).
Uhh....Those books exist because idiots will buy them. There's also books on how to work a mouse. That doesn't imply that working a mouse is somehow complicated.
Maybe it'll be easier after lots of hours spent trying to win stuff, but though it may boil down to Supply & Demand it certainly isn't that plain and clear.
It really is that plain and clear, you just need to open your eyes and allow yourself to see that. There really isn't any magic here, and there's no trick to it. You decide what it's worth to you, you bid that as your maximum and then you wait to see if you won.
I don't want to see you fall prey to this mentality--you're only going to screw yourself.
If you want some "tricks" see my comment above about bidding non-round amounts.
And another trick: If you can find some schmo who spelled the name of the item wrong (Search for likely mis-spellings) you can grab auctions that no one spotted.
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