Is crack a common drug for ebay bidders?

It robs the other bidders of the ability to react to your sniped bid. That is, after all, why you do it, isn't it?

They don't know you're sitting there waiting to snipe.

Because you upped it at the last second.

Red herring. We're talking about the close of an auction.

I understand it quite completely. I disagree with the ethics of those who choose to exploit it.

I've tried to figure out e-bay and the way you say you bid makes sense; however, why do you enter your one bid "very late in the auction"? Is that to reduce the time for people to outbid simply on a competitive basis?

Charles Lerner

You don't know they are sitting there waiting to bid or snipe. Right?

As long as it is less than or equal to your max then you win. If it is more, then you lose. How much simpler can this be? High bidder always wins. Bid what you want. If you win you win. If not, then don't blame the other fool.

Winning isn't everything. At least twice I was high bidder, but the real winners were the people who didn't win.

Start or finish. It only matters what the highest bid is at any time. Don't you understand this?

You don't seem to understand the basic principles of it. That is why I think you have a bad impression. Use your head.

-J

It is to keep the level of interest down. Some people bid on items based on the number of bids it has. They believe a popular item must be a good one. This is a fallacy.

Also sometimes people get caught up in bidding as a sport or competition. It is better for the buyer to resist this temptation. By bidding later you don't have doubts gnawing at you for a long time and you don't gain the sense of having to win the item that you do by looking at it for a whole week.

First off, you have to discount a lot of the "This software will win the bid for you" as marketing hype.

It boils down to the same old story - Highest bid wins. If two people are sniping the same auction using Bidnapper or any other software package, then both bids will be submitted to ebay in the final seconds of the auction as the respective maximums of the two bids.

For example, assume that you and I are sniping the same auction. I submit a snipe of $45. You submit a snipe at $45.01. The current bid is $20 with a proxy maximum of $30. A few seconds before the end of the auction, the sniping software will submit a proxy bid for you with a maximum of $45.01 and a proxy bid for me with a $45 maximum.

It really doesn't matter which goes in first in this case since our maximums are different. eBay will compare the maximum of whichever one is processed first to the current bid. Since it is more than the current bid plus the bid increment, it will be accepted. The current high bidder's bid will be advanced to it's maximum of $30. However, the new bid maximum exceeds that so either you or I will be the new high bidder (depending on whether your or my snipe was entered first) with a bid of $31. That assumes the bid increment is $1.00.

In either case, when the second snipe is entered the same thing happens all over again. The new bid maximum is either my $45, if your snipe went before mine, or your $45.01 if my snipe was ahead of yours. In either case, the new bid maximum is more than $32 (the current bid + the bid increment) so eBay accepts the bid. Note that if the new bid maximum is not at least one bid increment more than the _current bid_, eBay will reject the bid. Then the proxy process runs the bid up to a value equal to whichever is the lower of a) the larger of the two proxy maximums, your $45.01, or b) the lowest of the two proxy maximums plus the bid increment, my $45.00 + $1.00 = $46.00. Since $45.01 is less than $46.00, you are the high bidder at $45.01.

Incidentally, that also explains why someone can be the high bidder when their bid is less than one bid increment more than your maximum bid.

Rather long-winded, and I apologize for that.

Also, the standard disclaimers apply. I am not associated with either eBay, Bidnapper, or any other sniping software product. The discourse above is a compilation of my research into public information available on the separate eBay and Bidnapper websites. The research was the result of being highly disappointed when a beautiful Bedrock #606 was sniped away from me.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

It is strictly a bidding tactic. Let's say I submit my maximum bid of $25 as the first bid for an item whose opening bid is $10.00. The bid will be entered as a $10 bid. Now, along comes "John Nibbler" and bids $15.00. (For simplicity, let's assume a constant bid increment of $1.00). The proxy system will advance the bid to $16.00 with me still as the high bidder. Mr. Nibbler thinks about it for a while and decides that if he was willing to pay $15.00 then maybe it's worth $17.00. So he bids $17.00. The current bid jumps to $18 and I'm still the high bidder. Now, Mr. Nibbler feels the competitive juices begin to flow and begins to think of it as a sporting event or contest that he must WIN at all costs.

Mr. Nibbler then submits a sequence of bids with small incremental increases in the maximum until he is the "HIGH BIDDER" and "WINS" the contest. He has totally forgotten that an auction is not a competition in which there are winners and losers but is simply a venue for buying and selling. I have participated in auctions where the same bidder has submitted up to a dozen bids with only a dollar or two separating the bid amounts. That type of bidding is entirely appropriate in a live auction, but strikes me as somewhat asinine in a proxy bidding environment such as eBay.

I try to always avoid the use of the terms "WIN" and "LOSE" when the topic of discussion is an eBay auction. Bid what you are willing to pay, and walk away. But, if you do it early in the auction, you are very likely to fall prey to old John Nibbler running the price up too high so he can shout, "I WON!!!!". In truth, all Mr. Nibbler has accomplished is to pay too much for the item and artificially, and hopefully, temporarily, inflate the item's market value.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

Gawd, don't you just hate those bozo's. I always hope they get all the way up to the 'crunch point' and nobody lets 'em in. But it seems there is always someone up near the head of the line that's over endowed with a sense of courtesy and neighborly love.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

Not just stupidity, but some luck involved, too. For instance, I have a very nice leather duffle up on eBay right now (id: celtic_fiddler), but despite the retail value (well over $100) and the low starting price, I have no bids, and only a handful of 'watchers'.

Oh well. This one is nice enough that I won't mind keeping it. OTOH, if my listing style is not good enough, I'm going to have to get better at it when I start trying to sell my fiddles.

--

OTOH, every auction that I have personally won was one that I sniped. Without exception. So when I sell stuff, I don't mind if it's sniped.

-- Howard eBay id: celtic_fiddler Current listing:

They do. A maximum bid is placed and the highest maximum bid wins. If the highest maximum bid was placed 10 seconds after the item was listed, it wins.

I have a very simple system that works. For me anyway.

If I see an item I'm interested in, I'll place a bid for the maximum I'm willing to pay. If I get the item, fine, it is a good deal. If I lose it, I don't care. I've bought a few items that should sell for $20 and paid $2. If an item is starting to bid high, I'm not interested because I can probably find the same item at a retail store and have a full warranty.

Sometimes you get lucky. My wife order an item from a store with the intention of spending $130. It was no longer available. Searching eBay, it was found for $100 and a "buy now" option. She grabbed it and everyone was happy. (buyer, seller, financier)

Curious proof, definitely not very rigorous. Suppose that Tom is correct and sniping software is simply placing a proxy bid just before the auction ends. How is that proxy bid different is one a person places just before the auction ends? The bid itself is not different. However, that doesn't mean that the sniping software isn't useful. Some of the potential benefits for using the sniping software could be: (1) The person doesn't need to be online near the close of the auction. (2) Automate bidding on multiple auctions, especially if they have similar ending times. (3) Suppose that there are multiple auctions for the same item of interest, but you only want to get (or can afford one). Ideally, you want to bid on one auction at a time (if you win, you stop; if you lose, you move onto the next auction). Sniping software could automate this process.

It seems to be that sniping software could be useful if it automates placing normal proxy bids, so it could exist and could be used even if its bids are no different from the normal proxy bids.

That said, I agree that sniping (by software or manually placing last minute bids) will be used to try to buy at a lower price by avoiding an emotional bidding war. I have never used sniping software so I'm not sure if it does anything more "devious" than what Tom contends (such as bidding just XX amount over the highest bid), but I can see how it would be useful if it simply automated the normal proxy bidding.

BadgerDog

Howard notes:

It is a nice looking bag at a reasonable price. I think your basic problem may come from the fact that it's an item everyone already has--often two or three times over. I'd guess I've given away at least six of the dozen I used to have, and I still have five more than I need.

Charlie Self "It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office." H. L. Mencken

I watched *two* of those guys, in quick succession, in a construction zone a few years ago. Guy in a pickup, pulling a boat trailer, is in the left lane, sees the "closed ahead" sign 300 yards down the road, slows down, flips on his turn signal, and starts looking for a place to move over. He's being a Good Citizen. But the Me-First Selfish Bastard (MFSB) in the Beemer behind him can't wait. Honking his horn, flashing his lights, pounding the steering wheel (really!), he passes on the shoulder, roars on down the road, and cuts in to the right lane maybe 50 yards before the pylons. Not _ten_seconds_ later, here comes MFSB #2, flying along in the left lane, passing everything in sight. A tractor-trailer driver, having observed MFSB #1, moves over a bit to partially block the left lane. MFSB #2 moves left, tractor-trailer moves farther left, eventually blocks the entire lane. MFSB #2 passes him _in_the_median_, fishtailing all over the place in the grass, fights his way back onto the road, passes everything he can before getting to the pylons, cuts over into the right lane _and_runs_into_another_car_.

By and by, traffic crawled along to where I could clearly see the two cars off on the shoulder. The guy that he hit ... was MFSB #1.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.

... snip

Ah, there is justice in the world. :-)

Yep, those folks are really irritating. For the family oriented newsgroup, how about MFSS&S? (Me First Selfish So&So)

It's the only such bag *I've* ever possessed... So not *everybody* has one (or more). I don't really need it, but it's nicer than any of my cloth gym bags, so I won't feel really bad if it doesn't sell. I may put it away for a while and try again later.

OTOH, I do need to make sure I learn exactly why it didn't sell, so that I can apply the lesson later. It could be that folks don't really *want* a really nice leather duffle because they would be afraid it might be ripped off or they would feel bad about it getting scuffed or something.

I've got a high-end leather attache that I plan to list on Sunday.

--

I mentioned earlier that *all* of my successful buys have been sniped. Turns out that's not 100% true; I forgot about the few items that I used "buy it now" on. It seems that anytime I enter an early bid, it triggers a bidding war that runs the price up past where I would want to buy.

I've been studying the sales process in some depth (I'm actually trying to make a living that way, so it's of vital interest to me to understand what's going on), and the general consensus is that *all* buying is emotionally motivated. You come up with justifications that seem logical later.

I have definitely established that when I use emotional appeals, I sell more insurance than when I try to use logical arguments. The best results are when I dress up an emotional appeal to make it sound logical. (nearly everybody needs, but nobody really wants, insurance)

There is something intensely satisfying about seeing poetic justice in action.

-- My opinionated book reviews on sales topics

See above. I understand it, and disrespect people who choose to exploit that tactic. I further feel that people, like you, who go to great lengths to justify how it's _not_ unfairly decreasing the seller's price, while explaining that you do it to decrease the seller's price, are working hard to justify that to themselves.

As interesting as this topic is(n't), I can't really see this going anywhere. You'll keep sniping, and I'l keep disrespecting you for it.