Bid Sniping

Gosh golly, as usual I'm late to the fight.......er, um, uh.......discussion. Some of the responses in this thread had me wetting my pants. Harmony hut for a couple of you.........

I'm just gonna weigh in on one thing and that is sniping software in regard to multiple auctions. If you take a site like Teletrade or Heritage, where the hammer goes down at a pre-destined time, and you're bidding on 3 or 4 things, there's no way you can snipe them all at the last millisecond. That's why God created sniping software. In conclusion........

[video=youtube;WJTBPdVpdMc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTBPdVpdMc[/video]

 

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I was vague but thought we could all understand what I meant. Which was Sniping programs and their prices vs performance.
Next time I will try to be more detailed in my request lol

 

lol Thanks I guess :foot-mouth:

 

Because i like to see how the auction plays out, and try to place a lower bid than what my max might have been.

 

I thought you were perfectly clear about it in your opening post AND your follow-up comments in post #24. Unfortunately for some, y-o-u h-a-v-e t-o s-p-e-l-l e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g o-u-t v-e-r-y c-l-e-a-r-l-y a-n-d c-o-n-c-i-s-e-l-y.

Chris

 

Here is a real life example of sniping.

I had to go to another state this weekend for my father's birthday. I set up 28 snipes, and won 7 auctions while I was driving.

Another example is I had done similar once, and instead won about 20 auctions. I did better than I planned, so I would have been short of money for the next set of auctions I wanted to bid on. No problem, I cancelled my snipes for the next series of auctions, got coins I wanted within my total budget. If I had simply placed bids, I most likely would have spent way too much money.

Those two examples highlight the main reasons why many of us snipe besides wishing to sidestep "bidding wars" to drive up costs.

Chris

 

You can retract your bid not recommended but still,you should never be setting up snipe or bids if you don't have cash to cover it and being able to cancel it is not valid reason for that practice.

Lets say you forget or got tied up or lost power/inernet good luck canceling your snipes. People have done something similar with the markets and we all know how well that worked out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

 

Retracting a snipe is not exactly the same thing is retracting bid. A snipe isn't a bid until it is placed as a bid, usually just before the auction closing.

 

That was my first reaction, too, but reread the comment. He's pointing out that sometimes circumstances prevent you from canceling the scheduled snipe.

Maybe somebody needs to set up an automated snipe-canceling system that will stop your snipes if you don't confirm them within a certain time prior to auction close. Of course, then you'd need something to deal with situations where you can't get to THAT system in time...

 

I have 3 different ways of accessing the internet at any point in time. I don't have that problem. Besides, when I say "too much" I mean ove what I comfortably planned on spending at that time for my hobby. I can always comfortably write a check for 10 times the sum of any snipes I have set up sir. Its not a matter of being able to afford it, it is WANTING to spend that much.

10 years and I have never had an issue. If you limit your bidding assuming you will win 100% of the lots you simply will not be able to buy very many coins.

 

I am not saying you shouldn't be doing it but what i am pointing out is saying that advantage of sniping is that allows you to bid more than you have is not the best advice to be giving new ebayers (OP). Just like leverage what is you said is good strategy but it is not something everyone should be doing. Basically you might have someone reading/intrepeting your comment and going out and seting up 100 snipes for 10k even though they have only 100 dollars, it is disaster waiting to happen.

 

OK...this thread got too painful for me to follow, so please allow me to ask an obviously dumb question...if you're not talking about manual sniping, what are you talking about? I've "heard" of sniping software/tools, but have never seen any (not that I've looked). Can anyone give some concrete examples? Perhaps you have, but as I say, the thread was too painful to read.

 

Yakpoo - Duke has us going in endless circles let me sum up the options listed thus far ~ I figure I owe him /you that much for helping derail this thread just by participating. If I missed any, I apologize, it was hard for me to spot them all too.

Bidnapper
Auctionsniper
Goofbay - and it's FREE
Gixen
Gavelsnipe

 

LOL!! cool....I'll start googling! :cheers:

 

Don't blame Duke. It is some of the others who started the merry-go-round and didn't want to get off.

Chris

 

Yak, they are simply third party sites that you can enter the auction number, (copy/paste), tell it the max to bid, and how many seconds before the end of the auction to bid. Your logon tells the site your ebay username/password. The one I use isn't free, but like $9 for 60 successful hits. The way I bid that is usually good for about 1000 snipes or more.

I didn't read most posts here, so I am unsure the controversy.

 

Chris - I know that, that is why I added the wink. It wasn't Dukes fault at all and I feel sorry that this thread got so out of hand.

 

Thanks! :cheers:

 

Don't worry about it. I tend to avoid using the emoticons. Too many people today have enough trouble trying to think without some form of outside help, i.e., computer or calculator, so I like to try to stir up the old gray matter.

Chris

 

Thanks Chris, the unfortunate part of the internet is that it is hard not to be misunderstood without using aides that broadcast your intent. LOL - some people around here do tend to use images too much though and we could all use a little more clear grey matter at times!