Ebay Snipers - How Common?

That's only visible to the seller, though, isn't it? At least till auction is over.

 

Not visible at all. Sellers can only see the highest winning amount and the bid history, like everyone else. Even after the auction is over, you can't see the winning maximum, only the winning amount. So if you bid 600 and won for 20, it only shows 20.

The only times an actual bid amount shows up is when you're outbid, or when you withdraw a bid.

 

There are also @#*%@ bidders - As a seller, I once had a guy drive up the price against one of my previous customers, then e-mail that person and claim that he was my brother and that he was just trying to make me more money. My customer then relays the story to me and tells me that she never intended to pay that much and she was going to report it, so I reporter the other bidder. I ended up relieving my previous customer of her obligation, and then a few days later, the other bidder offers to buy the item at a quarter of the price. To make a long story short, I relisted the item and that same @#*%@ bidder ended up winning the auction at half the price of the "original" winning bid.

The funny thing is, he gave me the best positive feedback that I've ever seen...

 

I get what you mean now.
That's pretty diabolic! Good thing I use a sniping service.

 

Early bidding is only for the benefit of the seller. Sellers hope for early high bids, and the following bidding wars. Some even state in the auction that bidders should bid early as to not risk losing the item due to last minute glitches. ALL bidders should just bid there best offer at thre last minute! This keeps the price lower for everybody. Don't show me your hand! I research ALL bidders and look at there previous purchases and the amounts they are willing to pay. I'm able to develope profiles for my competition. Why would you want to give me this info? Bid late!!!!!!!

 

I just got sniped. Can't believe he is going to shell out $50 for a Smiths Rough Trade cd. Do they go for that much?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBUAA:US:11&Item=4867900499

 

After cancelling a bid on an auction, can you make another one on the same auction? I didn't think you could...

 

Yes you can.

 

Yeah, I was wondering if there was some way to suss out my high bid because the people who bid against me were yanking up the cost by $10.00 per each new bid. I'll never bid early again. eBay is clearly a great place to be if you are a seller, and a place where it pays to figure out the game FAST if you're a buyer.

( I've been cracking up watching the prices on those Disque Americ "Help!" and "Rubber Soul" discs.)

 

I've been on eBay (with my original, deleted name) for 10 years. Still, the sickest shi+ I've ever seen was just about a year and a half ago. There was a 2-CD set, mint, mastered by Steve on there, and with 30 seconds left, it was sitting at around $30. I was almost moonwalking after I punched in $50. Some fingers must've did the walking, because that bastard went for over $80!! I think it was closer to $90. I almost fainted.

I like to stroll around the outer edges of eBay, but for me, it's CLEARLY not as much fun as it used to be.

 

The other thing to remember when you are outbid, is you never really know by how much. Say you bid $20 for something and someone wins with a bid of $20.50, you might think but I would have paid $21 to win...you never really know what the other bidder's high bid was, only that as soon as he outbid your high bid and no one else bid, he won. For all you know he could have bid $50 and it would have taken more than that to beat him.

 

You should have put him on your "Blocked bidders" list. Not someone I'd want bidding on my auctions. What he did was not only "wrong" but just plain slimy. I wouldn't want that buyer, no matter how good the feedback was.

 

I do...it's called 'sore losers'...

I've sniped and been sniped...goes with the game, the territory. When you enter a race, you either play the game, or walk away. I'd say I win about 40% of the time, which is, IMO, an excellent ratio, given that I'm a last-second sniper and there are many of us out there...

It really comes down to how much you want a piece...when I really want it, I pay the freight. If I don't, someone else wins. But it IS fun for me, win or lose(winning is more fun, of course).

 

I didn't know that you could that - thanks for the info!

 

I don't like being sniped, I can't imagine anyone would, and I really don't like having to snipe. However the competition has gotten to the point, that I have to do it. Like others have said, I set my max and if it's enough to win the auction, great. If not, then at least I feel good I stayed within my limits. I won't get caught up in paying more for something just because I don't like losing an auction. You'll go broke quick doing that. And like Ed is saying, it's all a part of playing the game.

 

Whether you like it or not, sniping is part of the game. Do it yourself or just expect it.

Bottom line: Figure out the most you're willing to pay for something and make your bid at that amount at the latest possible time convenient with your schedule (or use a sniping program). If you bid early, you simply tell others you're interested, and that can act as a psychological incentive for them to bid more. There's absolutely NO advantage to bidding early that I can see (except for the seller).

It's annoying for the seller, of course, because until the last second you have no real idea how much something is going to sell for. But them's the breaks. (And I've sold a LOT on eBay, so they're breaking for me, too).


Kwad

 

Agreed....

 

I always snipe - that way I don't need to be there at the end.

 

Sniping or not, the only way to make an eBay bid for me is to always bid my max amount I'm willing to pay for the item. I don't think sniping makes a difference - if I bid my max towards the end of the auction vs. the start, I will still win/lose the item based on the next highest bid. Sure, you could argue that bidding early supposedly draws attention to the auction if an auction with a single bid gets more attention than an auction with no bids. I think it's the opposite, an auction gets more attention if it has no bids. Some people might avoid an item with even one bid if they know they'll have to "fight it out" with another bidder, and have no idea what their max is.

I also hear suggestions for eBay to make their auctions more like real life auctions and I don't like those ideas. Random auction end times or time extensions based on new bids don't work for the online auction. A preset ending time is more fair for everybody involved. The auction ends on time, instead of real auctions which can go back and forth for a long time. Plus it compels people to bid the max they're willing to pay, which will guarantee they win the item if nobody else can match it. Not only that, you don't have to pay your max amount, only the amount just needed to beat out the next highest bid. In a real auction, either you have to do a ton of increment bids until the next highest person drops out - which can take awhile or won't happen at all if they go higher than your max, or you can bid your max, and probably silence all the other people, but still be forced to pay that max amount because nobody would know what the second highest bid would be. So online auctions are great the way they are - much more beneficial for the buyer than a real auction.

 

Not only annoying, if you are selling an item from your own collection (as opposed to something you purchased with the intent to resell), it can be a Rollaids moment

I have a UK Decca mono Export pressing (with U.S. track listing) of the Rolling Stones' "Out of Our Heads" on eBay right now, ending this evening. It's in super condition, and I decided to try a low opening bid ($24.99 ) with NO RESERVE.

4 days into the 7 day auction, it still had NO BIDS!

The first day without a bid, okay. Two days? Strange, considering the opening bid is only $24.99, but still, okay (wait and see, anyway). 3 days with no bids? Alarm bells start going off. Something's not right. Did I list it wrong? Not that I can see...

Getting very concerned at this point...

By day four, I've had enough.

I paid nearly $350 for that album, and that was years ago. I don't know if I listed it incorrectly, or if people just don't know what it is, or if all the Rolling Stones fans went on vacation this week, or what in the world happened. After 4 days of watching nobody even crack the opening bid of $24.99, I revised it and had to put a Reserve on the auction.

The Reserve is significantly less than I paid, but I just couldn't risk someone winning it at the last second for around 7% ($24.99) of my purchase price. This isn't something I picked up last week in a bargain bin at Wal-Mart, it's a big-ear red label mono Decca "ffrr" 1965 original UK first pressing Rolling Stones album, and it's a limited production Export version with the U.S. track listing. There were never many of these produced to begin with, and there cannot be many of them left after 41 years that are still in top condition, and they certainly don't present themselves for sale with any frequency, even on the worldwide market of eBay.

After I placed a Reserve on the auction, a few people did begin placing bids. It's all the way up to $77 at the time of this posting (whoo-hoo! Less than 23% of my purchase price Put your money away boys, the party supplies are on me today )

eBay can be a strange place...

 

This is not the best advice for several reasons.

The skilled ebayer knows that it's best to not call attention to an item. Your bid does just that. An attractive item that has numerous early bids does, indeed, benefit the seller tremendously. It helps to whip some bidders into an emotional frenzy who, then, drive the selling price up past the ridiculous into the absurd. A case in point, here's a CD that's still got two days to go:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Jennifer-WARNES...Z4871058597QQcategoryZ307QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The most experienced ebayers also know that it is not a good idea to keep revisiting an auction page for an item that interests them. Since most auctions have the counters for a number of hits the page has had, an interested buyer has some sense of what he might be up against when it comes time to have your auction sniper place your bid for you with mere seconds to go. The more hits there are, generally speaking, the more interested potential buyers there are. Of course, there are exceptions to this: one of the items I sold on ebay a few years ago had over 2000 hits, yet there were only 30 bidders on it. The best strategy is to click on the "Watch This Item" button and then monitor it from your "My ebay."

 

Two observations:

1. In my experience, the items most likely to be sniped are high quality items with top notch sellers. These tend to attract experienced purchasers who are willing to pay top dollar, and these purchasers often snipe. I saw a nice UK pressing of Sticky Fingers jump from about $77 to about $270 in the last few seconds recently. There is no defense to this. With this type of item, you have to snipe with the highest amount you are willing to pay.

2. Another reason not to bid early is that there are some purchasers out there (generally inexperienced) who do not come to terms with the maximum amount they are willing to pay unless forced to. Many people will not make the really tough decisions unless and until they have to. In situations in which I bid early, I've seen these guys post a dozen successive bids until they've topped me. They would never have topped me if they didn't have ample time to test my bid and convince themselves to bid more.

 

sgb,

You make great points. The "Watch This Item", to me, is one of those "great for buyers, bad for sellers" deals. Before this feature was available, I used to place a minimum bid on items that I was interested in, so that they would show up in "My eBay" and I could track them.

However, this not only started to drive up the selling price of the item (since everyone else would do the same thing), it also alerted other bidders in my genre that I was interested in that item. This would signal them that if they wanted it, they would have to bid higher than they might otherwise normally bid at the end.

Sniping protects the bidder, because no one knows who is watching something, and no one knows what your snipe is going to be before it's too late.

One other thing. Just because someone snipes, it does not mean that they will be sniping with an unusually high snipe. Sometimes, there are things that I may casually want, so my snipe will not be really high. If I get it, good, if not, well, tip of the cap to the winner.

Sometimes, when I really want something (like a quad reel), I go way high, and you know what. Many times I lose!

 

I recently won an auction using the auction tool by a mere 3¢. Others had given way to the high bidder on a pair of vintage tubes which were still well below a fair price. I took the time to study the high bidder's history (by searching on his past participation in auctions), and then made an accurate assumption as to what his high bid proxy might be.

I am currently watching an auction that still has 18 hours to go before closing. This particular item rarely appears on ebay in this specific format; in other formats it's as common as dirt. In fact, the last time I saw one of these on ebay was about 2 years ago. I stopped watching it when the bids took it to almost double what I was willing to pay for it. This one has an absurdly low opening price with no bids at all on it as of a few moments ago. I've set my sniping price to be 10% higher than what I anticipate anyone else who might be watching this item would be willing to pay for it. If I win it, I will feel lucky, but if I'm that lucky, I'll probably get it for less than half of what it goes for on Amazon.

 

Not necessarily. I think an item with numerous early bids will turn off prospective bidders who see a whole bunch of other people interested in the item and they'll think they're less likely to get it, and they will just pass on the item, hoping for another auction down the road with less attention. Some of the most craziest prices I've seen occur when the auction has no/one/two bids and some crazy sniping action occurs at the end. Why? It's probably because the sniper(s) out there think that there aren't "other bidders out there" and they'll put in a high sniping price as a result, hoping to beat out the one or two bids that they think will be low enough so that they can get away with it. But if there are at least two snipers out there thinking the same thing, you get a really high ending price, with no time for either of them to retract. With more early bidders in the mix and an idea of how much the item is going to sell for, snipers are more conservative in their bids. That's why I never pull a highly desired item on eBay even though it only has one or two bids on it with a low price. It's more likely to get jacked up huge in the last minute. Your mileage may vary of course, but this is what I've seen.

Agreed. Although I think the max amount you bid should always be the max amount you bid, and the number of people interested in it shouldn't change that amount at all.