I used to see if a competing bidder was online and then I'd see if they had bid on any other auctions. I'd purposefully bid on their other auctions to occupy them while I manually sniped the one I was interested in. This worked numerous times.

You are a bad, bad, bad, bad and very clever boy.

Malice, malice, malice. I still hate people.

They have a desire to win and are not really thinking about the cost anymore in a rational way.

An old adage that I tend to go by:

"Something is only worth what someone will pay for it"

Has eBay really become a pit of competition where people will gamble away
their money to end up with an item they never really wanted in the first place,
but bought because they succeeded in getting the winning bid?

Surely everyone is out to buy at their own valued price;
what that price is, is for the individual to decide.

(Mine own ramblings)

Has eBay really become a pit of competition where people will gamble away
their money to end up with an item they never really wanted in the first place,
but bought because they succeeded in getting the winning bid?


It certainly seems so in many areas. I have seen many items being sold for far more than their list price - and I am not talking about discontinued or at least hard to get items like empeg tuners here.

cu,
sven

I've seen this too...
A couple years ago when 10x DVD drives were first out, I found one on ebay for $25 so I bid at my max (around $100) and then I followed the link IN THE ITEM DESCRIPTION to the sellers sight and saw that they were selling them there for $125. I was out bid and then watched the item sell for almost $200. If the idiots had just followed the link they could have saved some money, I couldn't believe people did this just so they could win.

But it's not probably in eBay's best interests to do that sort of thing.

More importantly, it is not in the seller's best interests to do that sort of thing.

Bid prices will run substantially higher when prospective bidders can see what their "competition" is doing, and sellers are going to sell where the prices are best. If the sellers go elsewhere, ebay will suffer.

Also, keep in mind that ebay gets a percentage of the selling price, so it is in their interests to maximize the bidding.

I bid-snipe most of my auctions, but not by any automated program. I look at the previous bidding patterns of the other bidders, and plan my strategy from there. Someone who has placed four bids, each one just barely above the minimum increment to stay on top of the pile is amateur hour -- he won't be a problem. Someone who placed a bid three days ago, and then another one today with a substantial increase in what he is willing to spend is serious competition, have to watch out for that one. That sort of thing.

When I bid-snipe, usually with less than 10 seconds to go, it will always be my maximum amount I'm willing to spend, and that is usually substantially more than the current high bid. The reasons for bid sniping are thus two-fold: to prevent people who don't always bid their maximum from nibbling away at my bid and raising the price before they get discouraged and quit; and to out-snipe any other bid-snipers. Doesn't always work, but usually does. Once I got outsniped and out-bid by someone who bid 5 seconds before close, only to watch him get sniped by someone who bid with 3 seconds left. Made me laugh.

tanstaafl.

Just for what its worth, (and I've used ebay very seldomly) I usually place my bid in the last hour of an auction, but for completely different reasons. For me, I can't disipline myself not to be totally consumed with an auction once I have bid on it. . . before I bid I can always tell myself that maybe I still won't bid. I just get so wrapped up in things so I wait until the last hour to get wrapped up in a bid (I've only won one thing, and have pretty much stayed away since then). I am terrible playing the waiting game. . . I think I almost had a heart attack waiting for my empeg!

-Jeff