This happens all the time. I have my eye in something really good. I then proceed to completely forget about it until it’s too late. i had my eye on an auction of 11 Byzantine coins, including 6 or so high qualit folles and the rest others. it sold for $26. reslae value was probably 10 times that. not to mention that inREALLY wanted a few of them for my collection. I hate myself
It was. Incredibly good deal. each coin was worth at least $10, and some $20-$40. Those folles were delicious and I literally NEED a good quality deca. I am REALLY beating myself up because I was watching a damn tv show of all things. where are my priorities!?!?
I have been cruising ebay for awhile now. Sometimes I see good sets of Byzantines. I throw my max bid on it and then forget about it. If I win (I rarely do), awesome! If not, oh well.
My saddest loss EVER was this. My other job is as a clarinet restorer and reseller. maybe 6-7 years ago an extraordinarily rare clarinet, with a listed production of just 500 units was auction on eBay. I forgot about it, and it sold for $200. the most recent complete sale I saw for that model was over $2,000. REST IN PEACE
One tip is using a sniping programs like @ZoidMeister mentioned. Also, I tend to have a notepad or sticky notes next to my computer where I will write down something (a sort of "to-do list"). The process of writing helps with memory and since it is near my computer, I can read it as another reminder.
It happens unfortunately. In about 8 years of collecting, I had my share of issues: - last second outbids, even if I was there, but somebody had a better strategy - simply forgetting for the moment about items in auctions - technical bloopers - browser crashing EXACTLY when the live auction for the item I wanted was in place. Most frustrating ones are cases 2 and 3. I have a favorite auction house and they have 1-2 auctions each month, but with 1500+ items. Usually I prepare a wishlist, but if the items I want are numbers 2, 337, 876 and 1256 it seems to be easy enough to miss something. And usually when I remember that I want lot 876 the auction is already at lot 878. For case 3, for some reason my laptop decided it's a good idea to crash in the EXACT wrong moment a few times already, so I keep the website open on both my laptop and PC on live auctions I'm interested in. I try not to get extremely frustrated because in the end it's bad for your mood/health. It happens. Last time I lost an item due to browser crash, in the same auction I won 26 coins. I prefer thinking that I have 26 new coins, not that I don't have 27.
Just happened to me as well. Actually I had my eyes on coins in two auctions and managed to miss both. It happened so often that I don't really mind that much any more. There is always another auction and always another coin to buy.
I woke out at 5am the other day so as not to miss an auction. I lost my main target but won my (still pretty spectacular) consolation prize for a steal.