Beings my Chicago bears had a bye and seeings how my Soc. Sec. check comes this week I decided it was a good afternoon to sit down and do battle with the Ebay snipers. I have been trying to pick up either a 1993, 1995, or 1997 silver proof set. The 2 latter being more expensive but i need these 3 for my collection. I decided to shoot for the 1993 and was trying to get it for under $17.00. I was being continuously sniped in the last 30 seconds all afternoon until I found one for 17.00 with 2 minutes left. Bids were going up in .50 increments, so i typed in 19.00 and waited till the last minute and at 30 seconds hit the bid button and the snipe could not get in this time quick enough & time ran out & I got it for $18.50. it was more than I wanted to pay but I was tired of getting beat all afternoon and wanted to end up with something, and it was still $6 cheaper than I have been able to find it retail. I am exhausted!!!!:rolling::rolling:
Glad you won. I don't using snipe software - I just get into the bid page and keep and eye on my watch. With 8 seconds left I can get a bid in - the problem is that I just am not willing to bid what others are. There was a large cent that I thought would be a good buy in the $50, decent in the 60$ - the puppy went for over $100 in the last few seconds. Oh well - time to wait for the next auction. Patience is one of the keys to keep us from over paying. Enjoy your victory.
I've done the same looking at auctions for a long time. Makes you wish you would have paid $18.5 a few auctions earlier. BTW nice pick up.
I'm my own sniper. I don't need software. I type in my high bid and sit there and watch the time tick down. When that feature wasn't there I'd count it down by listening to my watch tick. I watch to see if it moves until about 15 seconds or less. Then I click the bid button, still counting down in my head. At 5 seconds left, I click the final button on the second page to enter the bid. It doesn't leave time to enter another bid and it doesn't work 100% of the time but pretty effective none-the-less. It worked for me last night as a matter of fact. :smile
Why don't you fight fire with fire and use a sniping service yourself? I understand that some people enjoy the excitement of bidding and sniping manually, but personally, I don't have the nerves for it. Also, manual sniping is time consuming and inconvenient, you have to be sitting at your pc when the auction ends. With a service, you just schedule a snipe and go about your day - 'set it and forget it'. 'Nickel and dime' bidding makes no sense because the final price is basically determined by the 2nd highest bidder. Let's say you'd actually pay $50 for an item that is currently at $15, but you bid $1 higher 10 times in a row until you're the high bidder at $25. Let's say no one else bids and you win the item. If you had instead bid just 1 time for $50, you still would have won the item for $25, and saved a lot of time and nerves (from getting frustrated each time you'd bid $1 higher and see 'sorry, you've been outbid', or whatever ebay's message is). Decide on your absolute bid, place it or schedule your snipe, and move on. If you win great. If you lose, the winner paid too much.
Either your sniper friend wasn't using snipping software or he wasn't going higher than $18.00 which made you the winner.
I am disabled after 30 years of working and being out of the house everyday. Now I am pretty much home bound, I guess doing battle with the snipes gives me the feeling of still working!!! The thing that kills me is when you see a proof set with a buy it now price, and you go down the page and see an auction going on for the same proof set and it is 10.00 higher than the buy price on the other one!!!!!:bigeyes:
I don't agree. The psychology of Ebay bidding at the end of an auction works like this: You don't want to give the previous high bidder an opportunity to think about the fact that they've been outbid. I dont even want to let people know I'm there or want it! All they can do is sit there with the current high bid and assume they will win it with under 10 seconds left, because no bids are coming in. If people have time to think, they have time to rationalize with themselves and justify bidding higher and higher. And whatever 'it' is, it will be bid up higher! I don't see any point at all in bidding until the last second unless you want to spend time driving the price up for yourself or you absolutely can't be at the computer. In using my method, the previous high bidder is helpless IF they don't have a high enough bid in. Which seems to be the case most of the time. Most people don't clear the previous high bid by very much. Depends on how bad everybody wants the item. My bid goes through and registers with 3 seconds left or less. Now the other guy doesn't physically have time to get another bid in or even think about it. The pages can't load fast enough. If you place it with 3 minutes left, now people get excited, and that leaves ample time for the other guy to place another, higher bid to beat you. Or it turns into a back and forth battle and the only one that wins is the seller. The sniping software is intriguing though. That would be the ultimate convenience. Basically, if you wait till the end, and enter in a bid say $50 above the last bid, you either clear the high bid (or not) and the auction's over. You do this 5 minutes early, now obviously, the other guy might wait until the end and bid it up another $30.58 to try to snipe you. You still win and it still may be a good deal, but now you just paid $30.58 more for not being patient and risking it at the end. While some people will never understand this concept, I believe others like to bid items up for the fun of it, knowing they won't win, just for something to do. If there are a ton of bids and several of the bidders have zero feedback, I won't bid because it's likely fake accounts shill bidding for the seller. I always check the bids to see who's bidding. Despite anonymity.
That's what I was getting at. Sniping is really the way to go when bidding on ebay auctions, it really doesn't make sense to bid otherwise. However, some people have a moral issue with sniping and or using a sniping service or software. I don't see why, as all they're doing is bidding in the last few seconds. If another bidder would have bid higher if they had time, they should had bid their maximum the 1st time they bid, that is their fault, not the person's sniping. Bid 1 time, whether you are a sniper or not.
