I just want to vent here for a moment... Just lost an auction for a really cool token. I liked it because it was likely from the 30s - 40s (no later then 46) and had both an incuse and raised design. I wish I would have set my max bid higher Ah I just hate it when this happens. Anyone else care to share something they lost out on?
That sucks! I lost an auction for a lot of 500 wheat cents (it was going for just under 4 cents a coin) then some weirdo made it at about ten cents a coin....
If you were bidding four-cents per coin and it was an unreserved auction then it would have taken at least two bidders to raise the price up to ten-cents per coin and not a single bidder. Perhaps they noticed something in the lot image that you did not see?
Ah yes, that incredibly nice looking No Arrows 1853-O Half Dime . . . only about a VF35 or XF40 (only?), but an extraordinarily nice looking coin . . . perhaps the most desirable of the date. I lost that auction about a dozen years ago, and can still see that coin in my mind's eye . . . perhaps I'll get another shot at it again when I'm much smarter.
the picture was a cooler filled with cents, from quite a distance too. and it was only two bidders... my Max Bid was at 6 cent per coin, and within the last 20 seconds it went from dead mine to far from it.
Oh man! Haha! If it was you, I'd be PMing you every couple days, making sure you weren't tired of it yet!
When I was first getting back into the hobby, someone listed a complete-but-32-d-and-s Washington silver set, with most of the coins looking high AU or MS. It was listed BIN/BO at just a bit over melt. I had almost enough money in my PayPal balance, but going over that to tap my bank/CC was a big psychological step. While I was dithering, someone made an offer below melt, even below my PP balance, and the seller accepted! I don't know for sure that it was a misfortune. Given my knowledge at that point, I might have been looking at a cleaned/polished set, and silver's come down a long way since then. But I was sore about that one for a long, long time. At this point, I'm mostly pretty calm about getting outbid -- I set my snipe, and if someone goes higher, it reassures me that I'm staying conservative enough in my bidding. Maybe someone spotted a treasure that I missed, but maybe I spotted a problem that they missed.
Yeah, you always remember the ones that got away. I set up 18 auction snipes a week ago and won NONE, nada, zilch. Same dude overbid me on 12 of them. If it weren't for him, I would have had a pleasant week. Oh well. Like the cheesy Star Wars line, there are always more coins.
You know, just about all my bids go like this - I'll set a price I'm comfortable with and walk away. This one...guess I should have set a higher bid. Also, that did sound like a nice set Jeff.
Do you use "Watch Count"? Besides actual bidders, it also tells you how many people are watching a particular item. http://www.watchcount.com/advanced.php Chris
About a year back I missed out on two auctions. Both were by low-feedback sellers, and for some reason these auctions seem to attract less attention so I thought I had a higher chance of winning. One was for a 1795 Large Cent that looked to be in Fine. I had it up until the last few seconds at around $100 until someone sniped me. The other was a cool Nova Caesarea colonial that I was watching. Bidding stayed low until the last day when two guys got into a bidding war, and eliminated all hopes of me affording that coin.
There is nothing wrong with using a sniping service if you want to give yourself the best chance of winning without going overboard on your bidding. Just set it and forget it! When I was actively buying on eBay, I used Bidnapper for placing as many as 50 bids at a time. Back then, it cost me $43 per year for unlimited snipes. I made that $43 back in the first week from the money I saved winning about 80% of the auctions. Chris
For some reason the iPhone doesn't show the Watch count but a desktop will. I consistently forget to manually snipe a coin and it gets away super cheap. I can think of several
I can relate medoraman A few years ago eBay was very profitable for me. In recent months however, like you, I constantly get overbid by the same guy . . . the worst part? In perhaps one third of those cases, I'm contacted the next day with second chance offers because he backed out of the transactions after winning (evidently, he feels I'm willing to pay too much for coins I chase). I find that especially frustrating because, if I want the coin, my bid has been maxed out by a non-participant, instead of by an underbidder. In many other cases, I simply see the subject coin relisted again the following day. I know he's wiggling out of paying for most of his winnings, based on the sheer number of times I've lost to him, and the relatively low number of completed transactions reflected in his feedback profile. I wouldn't be so bothered, except that I often spend quite a bit of time formulating my max bids, only see that time wasted. On the flip side of the coin, I'm quite sure I've been a pain-in-the-arse spoiler of someone else's plans on numerous occasions, so I've got to take the bad with the good, right?
