E-bay bidding question

[jbn10161]

There's a wealth of information in these responses; thank you. I think I'll need to study at the Bay a little more even to understand some of the replies....

[GBM]

Ok Ricardo, after what you said I went back to Ebay and saw their little ' refresh' tag on the page .... I had not seen that... I had always had to refresh the whole page... taking 20-30 seconds or more.... that little tag allows refreshing at about 6 seconds at a time... very much better...

SO much better that I just won a test case...LOL

A pen was sitting with 10 minutes left on the auction... with only $1.85 shipping....and about $3.00 on the one bid... so I decided to bid about $15 total..... and I used the little refresh tag.... it was pretty close... when the smoke cleared... I had won and there were two bids between me and the bottom bid... so I was successful in placing my bid late enough that someone could not see it and raise the anty....

Sorry if some of you were one of those bidders... LOL

Thanks for all the info...

Greg

[finalidid]

True enough. Sniping is the only way to sensibly take part in auctions now.

 

Really? I just bid as my "hidden maximum" whatever amount is the maximum that I'm willing to pay on an item, and then let the software do the work. I tend to get things at prices which I like. I also tend NOT to get things at prices I DON'T like. I've gotten about six tobacco pipes off EBay, and two vintage pens, and maybe five vintage safety razors. Always at a sensible price, by my definition. Why snipe? It's not necessary.

 

[Deirdre]

Why snipe? It's not necessary.

On average, doing it the way you do it will mean that you pay more for the item in question.

 

Also, some inexperienced sellers will, in a panic, drop their price if there are no bids. Recently, I was watching an item that was listed at $100. It ended without anyone bidding.

 

Seller re-lists it at $75. A few days pass, no bids. Seller drops to $50. I bid on it, but just at $50, because I'm interested in the item, but not interested enough to really pursue it. At the last minute (literally), two other people bid it up to just over $60.

 

Had any of us bid early on, it'd have been at $75, but they wound up getting it for less.

[jhazelwood]

I really like this sniping tool http://sourceforge.net/projects/bom/

and it's completely free. The only problem is that when you actually view the auction page through it, it takes you to ebay deutschland, so everything's in german, but I like that too. lol.

christa

 

If you go under options then server select the ebay.com ini and that will default you to the US site.

[finalidid]

OK, I see that there might be some fine-tuning that can be done to my bidding process (the "plain" one), but the counter-example cited actually suggests nothing to me about auctions that I've been involved in. You're talking about either (A.) buy-it-now or (B.) reserve-price auctions where the reserve is not met by the deadline. I'm talking about auctions in which the behavior is open and incrementally aggregating upwards because of a "community."

 

I guess, if I and everyone else used my "plain" technique (just post up your own maximum at the outset, then let the software work), and then ONLY ONE person got involved with a sniping program, that person WOULD guarantee himself winning the item. Nevertheless, two other things would be guaranteed. First, he would win it at a price higher than my personal maximum, and therefore I would not have wanted the item. (Remember, we are presuming that I and all others have used the "plain" technique honestly.) Second, I would not pay more than my personal maximum for the item.

 

Therefore, the "plain" technique serves all my aims admirably. In the end, I'm not out to "win" something "from" someone else, and I don't want to be involved in last-minute frenzies; I'm simply interested in paying X, or less, for an item which I personally mentally evaluate to be worth X. Again, I don't see how I could personally benefit from engaging sniping software. My end price wouldn't change in any given circumstance, unless there are other factors at work that I don't understand.

 

If there are indeed those other factors, or if I've described the hypothetical situation incorrectly, please feel free to inform me. I haven't necessarily perfected this thing, and I'm happy to learn.

 

[rgarciasandoval]

Hi all

 

Hey Greg congrats for your new pen! I am very happy to know this tips where useful!

 

Ok there is also another e-bay tool that you can use. The countdown. That is a kind of on-the-web-tool from e-bay that gives you a real time (there are some non-real time?) countdown for the auctions, and let you bid faster-that-any-other-method. Auctions must have this two proprieties:

 

1.- been in your Watching list in your My e-bay page

2.- been payable with PAYPAL. Why? I really don't know, but you can nott bid on no-PAYPAL auctions using E-bay Countdown

 

Link for taking a look on this tool:

 

http://countdown.ebay.com

 

With this tool you can actually see how the price for the auction rise in the last 10-15 seconds, is quite impressive (and scary) to watch how a pen rise its price 100 or 200 dlls in just 15 seconds. Of course you can be part of the excitement and bid in the very very last 5-3 seconds. I am using a cable broad band connection, I am not sure if this will work with dial-up, but dial-up users can try. For sure this works better than the Refresh button.

 

Ok good luck and please share some picts from your new pens!

 

Very best

 

Ricardo

 

 

[AndyHayes]

Server load is also an issue, which is why you need to leave longer for a bid that ends exactly on the 1/4 hour.

 

Sniping also allows you to stack up a load of pens into a group. Say that you are after a snorkel and there are 6 up for sale one week. Place a bid on all of them and tell the sniping software how many you want to win. If you choose one it will stop bidding after you have won the first item.

[Aysedasi]

OK, I see that there might be some fine-tuning that can be done to my bidding process (the "plain" one), but the counter-example cited actually suggests nothing to me about auctions that I've been involved in. You're talking about either (A.) buy-it-now or (B.) reserve-price auctions where the reserve is not met by the deadline. I'm talking about auctions in which the behavior is open and incrementally aggregating upwards because of a "community."

 

I guess, if I and everyone else used my "plain" technique (just post up your own maximum at the outset, then let the software work), and then ONLY ONE person got involved with a sniping program, that person WOULD guarantee himself winning the item. Nevertheless, two other things would be guaranteed. First, he would win it at a price higher than my personal maximum, and therefore I would not have wanted the item. (Remember, we are presuming that I and all others have used the "plain" technique honestly.) Second, I would not pay more than my personal maximum for the item.

 

Therefore, the "plain" technique serves all my aims admirably. In the end, I'm not out to "win" something "from" someone else, and I don't want to be involved in last-minute frenzies; I'm simply interested in paying X, or less, for an item which I personally mentally evaluate to be worth X. Again, I don't see how I could personally benefit from engaging sniping software. My end price wouldn't change in any given circumstance, unless there are other factors at work that I don't understand.

 

If there are indeed those other factors, or if I've described the hypothetical situation incorrectly, please feel free to inform me. I haven't necessarily perfected this thing, and I'm happy to learn.

 

This is all true enough presupposing that the majhority of Ebay buyers use your 'plain' maximum bid from the outset technique. It would interest me to see how many actually do?

 

[Jinnayah]

With this tool you can actually see how the price for the auction rise in the last 10-15 seconds, is quite impressive (and scary) to watch how a pen rise its price 100 or 200 dlls in just 15 seconds.

 

Actually, just yesterday I lost an auction (or at least the seller lost out on some extra money) with that thing. For some reason it thought that my bid was below the current bid, when actually it was higher than the final closing price. I'm not sure if there was a server lag, or another glitch, or what, but it was too late to do anything about it, and my bid didn't get in. I'd used it several times before successfully, but this time it botched. I won't be depending on it for something I dearly want at least until it's out of beta.

Edited January 27, 2008 by Jinnayah

[Bradley]

Sniping: rubbish. The highest bid wins -- pure and simple. People are free to bid as they like. You place your maximum bid; if it sells for more, then someone was willing to pay more -- period.

[HLeopold]

True enough. Sniping is the only way to sensibly take part in auctions now.

 

Really? I just bid as my "hidden maximum" whatever amount is the maximum that I'm willing to pay on an item, and then let the software do the work. I tend to get things at prices which I like. I also tend NOT to get things at prices I DON'T like. I've gotten about six tobacco pipes off EBay, and two vintage pens, and maybe five vintage safety razors. Always at a sensible price, by my definition. Why snipe? It's not necessary.

 

I agree, I have never used a sniping service and I see no need for one. It certainly has not hurt my buying experience, I have over a hundred buying auctions won over the years. Yes, I do get outbid at times, at prices I would never pay. Only a few times have I increased my bid over my initial amount. In all I think I have won a total of close to 40 pens, 150 books, several computers, knitting/tatting thingies for Diane, and any number of other items.

 

I LIKE eBay, I have been using it for nearly a decade and have dealt with some of the nicest folks in the world. I always check feedback before bidding and before bidding on a new (to me) item I always watch a few weeks worth of auctions first to get a feel for how they go and also for how the prices run.

 

I tend to bid early, bid my maximum and pretty much forget about it until the auction is finished. I think I average about 40% wins on the items I bid on. I start with a clear idea of what I want and then look for that item (as many as I can find), watch how the bidding, find out how the shipping costs run, and how the end of auctions go, then after a few weeks I pick an auction that looks good to me and bid.

 

If someone comes in at the last few seconds and takes it from me at a price higher than I wanted to spend, fine, I hope they are happy with their new whatever, it went for a price I was not willing to beat. If they bid higher than I did, great for them, they wanted it more than I did and were willing to pay a higher price to be the owner of it. I could be the top bidder, and winner, of every auction I bid on, IF I were willing to bid twice as high as every other bidder, but that is not, in my opinion, a smart way to bid on auctions.

 

Do I hate being outbid by $0.50? Yep, and it has happened to me, but that person wanted the item enough to bid that much higher than I was willing to go. At the same time I have been outbid by several hundred dollars and there was no way I was going to try to outbid those nuts. (Anyone outbidding me had to be nuts, after all. ;-)

[HLeopold]

Why snipe? It's not necessary.

On average, doing it the way you do it will mean that you pay more for the item in question.

 

Also, some inexperienced sellers will, in a panic, drop their price if there are no bids. Recently, I was watching an item that was listed at $100. It ended without anyone bidding.

 

Seller re-lists it at $75. A few days pass, no bids. Seller drops to $50. I bid on it, but just at $50, because I'm interested in the item, but not interested enough to really pursue it. At the last minute (literally), two other people bid it up to just over $60.

 

Had any of us bid early on, it'd have been at $75, but they wound up getting it for less.

 

It is pretty obvious that it was not worth $100 to any of the bidders, so no one bid on it.

 

It is pretty obvious that it was not worth $75 dollars to any of the bidders, so no one bid on it.

 

So obviously sniping would not do anyone any good in this circumstance.

 

When the price came down to a starting price of $50 it is obvious that several folks thought it was worth at least that much, so some folks bid on it, pushing the price up to just over $60. If I had been watching it and thought it was worth, to me, $65 I would have bid, and if outbid I would have figured that someone felt it was worth more to them than it was to me. They win, I go on and look for another auction. I don’t lose. I didn’t bid higher than I was willing to go, I didn’t end up the “winner” of something I had, in my opinion, paid too much for.

 

In my case sniping would not have changed anything at all as I do my bidding, based on what I think the item is worth, to me. I could not care less about what someone else thinks the price should be, if it is too high, in my opinion, I don’t bid, nor do I bid higher than I think the item is worth, to me. I actually get at least half the fun out of auctions from watching other auctions in order to find out what things are going for on average (plus how much higher/lower some auctions actually run.) The time spent in researching how auctions of that item is going to pay me back in the long run, I get the item I want at the price I am willing to pay, I may have to wait a few months longer than I really wanted to, but if the time spent waiting is too much, I raise the price I am willing to bid.

 

Getting outbid is just an expected part of auctions, it happens anytime the price goes too high for a bidder. Only one person can win, well, other than Dutch auctions, and as the price goes up more drop out of the bidding for this reason until only one person is left, the person who bid (in the opinion of every other bidder) too high a price for the item. Again, in my opinion, sniping does me no good. The only way it would help me to win is to go to a price higher than I am willing to go, taking into account other costs such as shipping/etc.

 

If someone wants the item badly enough and is willing to pay more for it than I am willing to pay, they get it. Again, I don’t “lose.” I just go on to another auction and take my chance at getting the next one at the price I want.

[HLeopold]

Server load is also an issue, which is why you need to leave longer for a bid that ends exactly on the 1/4 hour.

 

Sniping also allows you to stack up a load of pens into a group. Say that you are after a snorkel and there are 6 up for sale one week. Place a bid on all of them and tell the sniping software how many you want to win. If you choose one it will stop bidding after you have won the first item.

 

OK, now I see that there is actually a real use for sniping software, it still is not one I need, but I can see the use. I think that in the last decade I have only two had two auctions on the same item that ended at nearly the same time. I bid on the one I really wanted, then I went to work. When I got home the next morning I found I had been outbid, by better than $50 on that one, and the other had gone even higher.

 

A month later I got what I wanted at about $10 less than my maximum on yet another auction.

 

But at least now I see there is a legitimate reason, at least for this particular piece of software, for its use. Personally I had never heard of a good reason to use it before.

[lapidary]

Sniping: rubbish. The highest bid wins -- pure and simple. People are free to bid as they like. You place your maximum bid; if it sells for more, then someone was willing to pay more -- period.

 

No, sniping is not rubbish at all.

 

Firstly, in the area of collectables, some people become recognised as heavyweight and knowledgeable experts and they draw attention to an item when they place a bid for that item and if you are talking about stamps or coins but perhaps also old pens, other people may scrutinise the item more carefully and also discover what your expertise has revealed to you.

 

Secondly, by not revealing your hand, others cannot whittle away at you until they take the lead, because they just don't have enough time. Finally, it gives me peace of mind; I have revealed my maximum bid only to the sniping server and I don't bother to sit around anxiously and if it is a sale on ebay.com, I can even go to bed!

 

I have been sniping for years and use Hammersnipe which is very cheap and reliable and will not waste any more time on traditional bidding and re-bidding. I have won many auctions this way and in the case of those where I was almost pushed to my limit, I have no doubt that sniping won me the item.

 

Of course, when sniping occurs, it can represent a loss to eBay and to the seller who might otherwise benefit from 2 buyers battling it out for an item that then reaches ridiculous heights instead of them sniping and largely hiding their intentions.

[GBM]

Harry, your argument is very good except for leaving out ' auction fever' ....which can and does happen regularly even if the people are not standing in the same room as the auctioneer.... psychology can affect what one person decides to bid.

[finalidid]

OK, I see that there might be some fine-tuning that can be done to my bidding process (the "plain" one), but the counter-example cited actually suggests nothing to me about auctions that I've been involved in. You're talking about either (A.) buy-it-now or (B.) reserve-price auctions where the reserve is not met by the deadline. I'm talking about auctions in which the behavior is open and incrementally aggregating upwards because of a "community."

 

I guess, if I and everyone else used my "plain" technique (just post up your own maximum at the outset, then let the software work), and then ONLY ONE person got involved with a sniping program, that person WOULD guarantee himself winning the item. Nevertheless, two other things would be guaranteed. First, he would win it at a price higher than my personal maximum, and therefore I would not have wanted the item. (Remember, we are presuming that I and all others have used the "plain" technique honestly.) Second, I would not pay more than my personal maximum for the item.

 

Therefore, the "plain" technique serves all my aims admirably. In the end, I'm not out to "win" something "from" someone else, and I don't want to be involved in last-minute frenzies; I'm simply interested in paying X, or less, for an item which I personally mentally evaluate to be worth X. Again, I don't see how I could personally benefit from engaging sniping software. My end price wouldn't change in any given circumstance, unless there are other factors at work that I don't understand.

 

If there are indeed those other factors, or if I've described the hypothetical situation incorrectly, please feel free to inform me. I haven't necessarily perfected this thing, and I'm happy to learn.

 

This is all true enough presupposing that the majhority of Ebay buyers use your 'plain' maximum bid from the outset technique. It would interest me to see how many actually do?

 

 

 

Oh, I don't think very many do, at all. But my story is still true even if only *I* use my own "plain" technique. My benefit from my technique doesn't require that others use my technique.

 

At least, not in so far as I currently understand it. So far nobody's succeeded in making a compelling case for me indulging in sniping next time I find an EBay item I might want. What is it, exactly, that would be the advantage of it? I can't see it yet. I'm sure I'll eventually see the light ...

 

I do indeed see, that if I were a "recognized" collector with a name that might attract attention, then sniping would give me an advantage. I could continue to bid on items with relative security that I would win within my desired range and not have to micro-manage it; but I could still refrain from "showing my hand" to others who perhaps rely on my judgment for their own assessment of the value of a thing. Sure, I see that. If David from (bleep) puts up a bid on a Vac that I was thinking about, I'll reconsider my likelihood of getting it, and I wouldn't blame him for using a sniping program to keep his identity hidden. But then, why doesn't he just use an anonymous EBay identity to keep his identity hidden? Anyway, that's ONE use for sniping. Doesn't apply to me. Nobody's following me around letting ME set the trends, lordie knows!

 

Edited January 28, 2008 by finalidid

[HLeopold]

Harry, your argument is very good except for leaving out ' auction fever' ....which can and does happen regularly even if the people are not standing in the same room as the auctioneer.... psychology can affect what one person decides to bid.

 

I have been involved with auctions since I was a kid. Real auctions, with the auctioneer up front getting the folks riled up and willing to spend money. My dad ran auctions for years, first as a way for the VFW to raise money, later just because he enjoyed it.

 

Auction fever is just like gambling fever, if you have it, you should not be at an auction with cash in your hands.

[mmb993]

He's a Nibbler and someone must already have had a higher bid in. Is he second or lower in the list of highest bids?

 

eBay only shows the lowest high bid you would need to win.

 

I don’t worry too much about how many bids there are on an item. Everything in an eBay auction usually happens in the final 5 seconds. There are people who are either trusting their reaction times enough to hold off entering their bids until then or using bid sniper services (like www.ezsniper.com) to place bids right before the very end. They usually determine the price. Their strategy is keeping the price from getting driven up early in the auction and catching others with their maximum bids too low with no time to react at the close.

 

Of course, the person with the highest maximum bid always wins but timing can really decide what they wind up paying for something.

 

Rather than discuss the virtues of sniping, I would find it interesting to compare the different snipping services. If you don't care to snipe it's fine, but I have been pretty successful in business by not giving away any information until absolutely necessary. I have my maximum but I don't want anyone to test it because I announced it early in the process.

 

I had been using AuctionSniper but they have been having a lot of server problems. I read the post from KipWilliams and tried ezsniper as he suggested. It's great and they have a couple of utilities (shadow and snapper that really help, check them out). I canceled all my AuctionSniper bids and moved everything to EZSniper.

 

What is your favorite sniping service and why?

 

 

 

 

 

[Deirdre]

If I'm going to have my computer up when the auction ends, I use jbidwatcher, which is a desktop application.

 

If I'm not, I use auctionstealer.com. It's the only web-based service I've tried.