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Message:: [QUOTE="drathbun, post: 1922875, member: 42789"]Here's how I view sniping as an advantage. Suppose I'm willing to pay $100 for an item. Someone else is willing to bid $95. If I put my max bid in early, then the person bidding $95 will see that they're out-bid right away. They have time to think about it, and come back and "nudge" their bid up $1 at a time until they find my limit. Ultimately I get outbid and lose the item because I made my intentions known to far ahead... tipped my hand, so to speak. Now suppose I put in a minimal bid of $20, or even skip bidding altogether. The other person comes in and bids $95 and sees that they have the high bid. There's nothing for them to push up against as in the earlier case. My "snipe" comes in at the last minute for $100 and I win the item for $96 (or whatever the next bid increment is). I've bid on items plenty of times and seen the competing bidders keep poking and poking at my bid until they finally beat it. (If if were the buying doing that to drive the price up it's called "shill" bidding and it's not allowed per eBay rules, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.) If eBay would extend auctions beyond the expiration time if there was active bidding going on (like a live auction) then sniping would not work. There was an auction site at one time (was it buy.com?) that did just that.[/QUOTE]