A repetitive strory: sometimes you find at auction a coin you have been looking for a long time. You place a "conservative bid" with a reasonable margin above the highest current bid. On closure of the bidding you are still on top yet, immediately upon closing, the name of another, higher bidder appears ! Although there are Piracy programs that enable you to have your bid submitted a few minutes before closing, these apply to e-bay, not to private auctions, and not seconds before closing. Is there an unknown Piracy program, applied seconds before closing or is a cunning bidder with his finger on the trigger, ready to beat you seconds before closing ? at the risk place his bid too late to succeed ?
A few minutes? What good is that? I never place a bid on anything I want at anytime before the last 8 seconds. There is nothing against that and I have my limits on what I want to pay so 90% of the time I win. This is ebay I am talking about though. About other sites.. I don't know. The other person I guess enters his Max amount and wins the prize.
Trying to know exactly when the hammer falls in auctions other than eBay is difficult when you cannot see the clock, but I've tried and succeeded numerous times, so I'm quite sure others have as well.
Bidders on eBay often complain that their manual snipe wasn't accepted. Their problem generally is that they forget that the internet is NOT instantaneous. It's a combination of: -- the countdown clock shown on their screen has a slight delay in reaching their computer -- it takes an additional time for their bid to get back to eBay. As for other online auctions, I don't know if there's a sniping app.
Ya know I can remember when there weren't any sniping programs, on ebay or anyplace else. Back then if you wanted to win you had to sit at your computer, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, and hit that enter key at just the right moment. Of course "just the right moment" was kinda hard to judge with dial up, which was all there was at the time. And then some bright enterprising person figured out how to write a software program to do it all for you. The problem in today's world is that just about everybody uses sniping programs. And when an auction gets ready to close they all start trying to outbid each other, with each bid coming in within fractions of a second of each other. The end result, well the winning bid often ends up being higher, sometimes a good bit higher, than anybody ever expected. I can even recall a couple instances when a coin worth a couple hundred ended being sold for a couple thousand. All on ebay of course. And now, people have learned, some of them have anyway, to do what should have been done all along. Place a max bid and let it go at that. And if ya win ya win and if ya don't then somebody almost certainly over-paid. Sad part is most of them don't even know they over-paid. Ebay has become a gold mine for sellers and a bottomless pit for buyers. So either know enough to recognize fair deals on Buy-It-Now, or buy your coins elsewhere. Or, be content to over-pay for every coin you own.
What's wrong with doing homework to determine approximate market value of a coin, deciding what it's worth to you, and if you can afford it, putting in a bid well in advance of closing? Then if you don't get it, shrug you shoulders and enjoy the hunt for the next one to be auctioned. Avoids getting caught-up in auction psychology where you may have buyer's remorse or be the one to establish a new auction high for a coin. Or if your object is to flip a coin, you may bid away your profit. More than once, I've seen tail-end bidders pay more than they would have to pay for the coin from a dealer, including buy-it-nows on eBay. In some cases, an equivalent or better coin had been advertised by a dealer for months. Cal
For any ebay items, I started using esnipe within the last year and probably will never bid any other way from now on. It can reduce the high bid on items with a limited number of bidders that want the item. In a perfect world other bidders would just put in a "high bid" and stick with it. Of course the problem is with folks that put in incremental bids so they will be "high bidder" long before the end of the auction. If I put first bid on an item with a starting bid of $50.00 and decide I am willing to pay up to $100.00 there will inevitably be some guy that will put in their "high bid" of $60.00... then $65.00... then $70.00 until they just give up making my high bid $75.00. If I snipe it the ending bid will only be the increment over the other bidders high bid of $60.00. I know that a lot of folks hate snipers but if you are really willing to put your real "high bid" without the need to see that you are "high bidder" on the listing, you wouldn't have a problem (other than the folks that need to see their current bid at the top long before the auction ends).
To address the actual question you're asking, yes, there are auction houses not above forcing a bid of their own (sometimes by an unknown proxy account) at the last second, on an item selling for less than they wished. On a less malicious note, a live auction also has people bidding in person and by phone, and these bids will not automatically appear online. You could very well have been outbid by a live human in the last few seconds, and the online record was not updated (since that must be done manually) until after auction end.
I enter a max bid and if I win I win. If I don't there's always another day. I think the problem with some people is that they have to have it now. Of course there are exceptions, like a well struck, above average example that rarely comes up for auction.
As others have said: -- do your research -- decide the value -- adjust for buyer's fee and S&H -- bid that amount - EARLY
The problem with this, is that anyone else interested will see your bid and bid the minimum over it. Early bidding doesn't do anything but raise the final price.
Exactly! I hate the Ebay messages I receive..."An item you are watching is ending soon, place your bid now".. Forget it!
Well, I mean if you bid your max early, they won't see it unless they bid over it. But the early bid is not a great strategy for winning the item. The items that have the least interest are easiest to win, and it's best to just put your bid in 15 seconds before the close of the auction.
Here is an example of an item I was watching. I was willing to pay $40.00 for it. I waited until the last 8 seconds to place my max bid... Then I saw some bids go in but not enough for the others to get it.. I got it at an incredible low price! That's how you do it folks! Not bidding early!
The Nash Equilibrium bidding strategy for a Second Price auction is to bid your maximum price at the last few seconds. It also minimizes the overall costs (you can't control what other bidders will do, but your late bid entry avoids a bid war. I win the majority of all auctions this way and usually don't even pay the maximum bid - since it's a modified second price auction, it's between what the second highest bidder bid and your bid, inclusive. The deceptive part is that eBay explicitly states (below) that one should bid their maximum at the start! It will only promote shill bidding or bid wars as buyers try to play to uncover your maximum bid! This strategy and auction format is designed to maximize eBay's profits, which is expected of a for-profit behemoth organization.
I agree that they overpaid. But bidding your max early, just increases the likelihood that someone who wants that item will outbid you. If you are looking at an item with not a lot of interest, bidding late will serve you better.
I can see both sides of this. Probably bidding ones max bid early is good for the seller. Waiting until a few seconds before the auction closes tells me that most bidders don't either know what the coin is worth or want to buy under market value. My early max bid is typically below market value and if I win, great. If it's a coin I really want I'll place a new max bid seconds before closing.
