partly true, but bidding too early can drive up the price. why pay the maximum amount you are willing to, if you can get it for 80% of that? snipe or stay home.
justsnipe is free and seems to work great.
eBay hates sniping programs, it's on their list of things to kill.
eBay hates sniping programs, it's on their list of things to kill.
halik
Lifer
- Oct 10, 2000
- 25,696
- 1
- 81
ebay sniping doesnt make any diff what so ever. If there is a person willing to pay more for the item, you'll lose no matter what time they put in their bid. I used to snipe back when i was new on ebay, but after a while you realize it doesnt make any diff. I just put in the highest amount in willing to pay and thats that.
sniping does give you an advantage over irrational/competitive bidders who bid higher when they are outbid. You also don't have to worry about shill bidding either. But against nomal bidders it doesn't help. Whoever is willing to pay the most gets the item.
kranky
Elite Member
- Oct 9, 1999
- 21,019
- 156
- 106
What Jzero said is truth. This sniping thing is highly overrated. Whoever bids the most wins. And never bid more than you are willing to pay because you don't want to get sniped.
On another board I use, a guy posted a couple weeks ago about an item he bid on. With a minute to go it was selling for $50. He thought it was worth $200 and was willing to go higher because he really wanted it, and his bright idea was this: to protect himself from losing out by a couple bucks, he bid $500.
Someone else had the same idea, and he won the auction for $485, way more than he intended to pay.
On another board I use, a guy posted a couple weeks ago about an item he bid on. With a minute to go it was selling for $50. He thought it was worth $200 and was willing to go higher because he really wanted it, and his bright idea was this: to protect himself from losing out by a couple bucks, he bid $500.
Someone else had the same idea, and he won the auction for $485, way more than he intended to pay.
Doesn't Ebay give you a service so that they always bid higher for you 'til the maximum price you are willing to pay?
Precisely. I now sell almost exclusively, unless I'm looking for something rare or obscure. I like early bidders, because it lets people know there's "competition." I like snipers, because the ones that use programs usually set their bid a little higher than the ones who bid in the last minute.
usually i bid just a little higher then the previous bidder so they will bid even higher, more money to the seller! the downside is that he may know what I am trying to do and decide to just let me win, boohoo!
If I really want something I always wait and bid at the last minute. If you
put in a solid bid someone will ALWAYS give $1 more than your high bid
at the last moment but if it's something you really want wait until the
last 30 seconds and start bumping it.
I'm talking about collectible items....not items that you can go down to BB
or Walmart and buy for a set price every day.
put in a solid bid someone will ALWAYS give $1 more than your high bid
at the last moment but if it's something you really want wait until the
last 30 seconds and start bumping it.
I'm talking about collectible items....not items that you can go down to BB
or Walmart and buy for a set price every day.
anyone else like finding an auction and try to find what the current bidders max bid is? Drive it up by a dollar or 2 here and there..
hehe uh me either.
hehe uh me either.
boo, lost 2 auctions yesterday.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4015390694
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4015391501
sniped, but other guy had higher max. =/
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4015390694
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4015391501
sniped, but other guy had higher max. =/
i see tons of ebay addicts(idiots) who overbid/overpay...a LOT of times more than retail, just coz they gotta win that item so bad. And most of these same idiots seem to not take s/h into account.
yukichigai
Diamond Member
- Apr 23, 2003
- 6,404
- 0
- 76
Yup, it's called Proxy Bidding. But that assumes you won't change your mind later.
The problem is that the very act of bidding on something draws attention to it. If nobody bids until the last minute you don't get very many looky-loos bidding on the stuff, or if you do it's only the folks looking for a super-cheap deal. Which is why there's a market for sniping services I guess.
It's sort of like poker; you don't give away your hand until the last possible minute in order to stay on top.
Exactly. In the offline world, there are all sorts of auctions. I remember before eBay there were "sealed bid" auctions for collectibles ran on newsgroups. In a sealed bid auction, the "auctioneer" (some guy who wanted to get the most he could for stuff he had) would give a list of stuff he wants to auction, with minimum bid prices, and would tell other people on the newsgroup who were interested in the stuff to make their bid "i.e., their best offer) by a certain (usually the deadline was a couple weeks to a month after the initial anouncement of the auction). In this way, no one knew who was willing to pay what for a given item, and it was a pretty good way for the person selling to come to an agreement on the "worth" or "value" of a given item with another party.
In another type of newsgroup auction, people would email in their bids day after day, and the "auctioneer" would have a lot more work to do, updating and sending out "current minimum bids" for each item.
eBay improved upon this by automating the system for the seller, and using http (html (webpages) viewable with a web-browser - a tool "the common folk" can use) instead of nntp (text only newsgroups, viewable with text only news-readers - a tool used exclusively by geeks, at least in 96). However, depending on which type of bidder you are, you can bid daily, checking back on the auction to see if you are ahead, or can set up a program to "reveal how much you are willing to pay" at the end of the auction (like a sealed bid auction). Don't get mad at eBay about it, just bid what you are willing to pay, before the auction ends, and if you are the person who bid the most before the auction ended, you will win. The benefit of sealed bidding is that you don't drive up the price any more than necessary by having "bidding wars", and the benefit of bidding from the time you see the auction til it ends is that you can scare potential bidders away.
Someone said that sniping is a way to avoid shill bidding, but that's not really true. A seller might not be able to bump you up to the most you are willing to pay, but a seller is still able to bump the price up to the least amount he is willing to sell for, by using a shill.
sandorski
No Lifer
- Oct 10, 1999
- 70,785
- 6,345
- 126
Yes! 7ish years ago, just before Ebay became a major Auction website, I began Bidding at a website that did just that. As long as there was action happening in an Auction, the Auction continued. For the life of me I can't recall what the name of that site was, but it was big back then. After discovering Ebay though and after my bro was told his "Won" Auction was an Out-of-Stock Item(which they were Auctioning again in a week :|) I dropped that site like a bad habit. Did manage to get some good stuff from there though.
If one must "Win" though, Bid High and Bid Often! You'll "Win" everytime!
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