So Anyone Got Any Good Deals from eBay Lately?

djohannsen

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Well I looked at the bid history and it's obvious he had placed a high bid about six days before the auction ended. He only bid once. Every time you bid, it took your bid, increased his bid by proxy ($1 over the current high bid) and reset the selling price.
This is the reason that I use a sniping service. I think it's somewhere between ten and twenty cents per snipe, and, for me, it definitely pays for itself (I set a snipe bid and walk away until the auction is over). I've found that if I bid early and walk away (like the above situation), then other bidders will nibble me to death (they bid and aren't the high bidder, then keep coming back again and again bidding a few dollars more each time). Throwing in my bid 4-6 seconds before the auction closes keeps this from happening (and then I don't need to be at the computer when the auction ends).

Just my two cents.


Dave
 

clubby

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I do as well. I've used esnipe for many, many years, probably 10-12 years. The ONLY time I ever bid before the last 5 seconds is if I'm the first bidder. Often times I will bid to take the BIN away. Every time you bid except the last time, you're driving the potential price up to yourself. eBay relies on people's stupidity of getting into "bidding wars" to make their money. Bid once, bid last, bid as high with that one bid as you're willing to pay. How much you're willing to pay for something shouldn't change based on somebody else's bidding patterns.
 

Rindis

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I do not snipe. I figure out what I'm willing to pay for something (including shipping), and I set my bid to that amount and walk away. If someone else wants to spend more than I want to spend, I have my money for something else.

And back on subject, I've gotten AP10 and Out of the Attic 1 for semi-decent prices lately.

It seems like lately, some of the products I'm used to seeing really high prices on (KGP, A97...) have come down a bit. Anyone else noticing that?
 

clubby

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It doesn't matter if you know your price and think that bidding once early will solve that dilemma. It won't. You can't control the human emotions of other bidders who will get carried away and run up the bid you placed until they outbid you. It might take them 10 bids to get it, but they will as they chip away at your high bid. If you leave the price low and let them think they might be able to steal it for a low price, then you snipe it with your max bid with 5 seconds left, you either win or lose, but you eliminate their opportunity to stew over it for four days and chip away at your price. You can bid however you like but placing a bid well before the auction ends and just hoping for the best is the system used by people that don't understand how auctions work.
 

Rindis

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It doesn't matter if you know your price and think that bidding once early will solve that dilemma. It won't. You can't control the human emotions of other bidders who will get carried away and run up the bid you placed until they outbid you.
It does solve that dilemma. I don't get swept up in my emotions and pay more than I want to. If other people who don't know how the system works want to keep going a little bit higher in a number of meaningless bids... well it's their budget they're breaking, not mine.
 

djohannsen

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Well, not a super deal or anything, but last night I got an unpunched copy of Partisan for $24.95. I can't bring myself to pay what AoO is going for, so at least I now have Axis minor infantry and SW.
 

Bob Walters

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Well, not a super deal or anything, but last night I got an unpunched copy of Partisan for $24.95. I can't bring myself to pay what AoO is going for, so at least I now have Axis minor infantry and SW.
Yeah, that is what I did. Also someone on eBay was selling the Hungarian AFV counter sheet from Festung Budapest so I bought that. I hear CH is going to have nationality sets for Axis Minors soon.
 

Pitman

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It doesn't matter if you know your price and think that bidding once early will solve that dilemma. It won't. You can't control the human emotions of other bidders who will get carried away and run up the bid you placed until they outbid you. It might take them 10 bids to get it, but they will as they chip away at your high bid. If you leave the price low and let them think they might be able to steal it for a low price, then you snipe it with your max bid with 5 seconds left, you either win or lose, but you eliminate their opportunity to stew over it for four days and chip away at your price. You can bid however you like but placing a bid well before the auction ends and just hoping for the best is the system used by people that don't understand how auctions work.
Of course it matters. The previous poster was exactly correct. If you bid what you are actually willing to pay and no more, you have no need to snipe. If someone comes in at the last second and outbids you, it doesn't matter, because you weren't willing to pay that much anyway. Otherwise, you get the item for a price you were willing to pay. It is foolproof. I have bought hundreds of items on e-bay that way and not once did I pay more than I knew I was willing to pay. Sniping is for people who want to try to game the system.
 

Bob Walters

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Of course, if you put in what you are willing to pay in the last few seconds then the people who have more dollars than sense will not bid up the price and you will actually get the item.
 

Pitman

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Of course, if you put in what you are willing to pay in the last few seconds then the people who have more dollars than sense will not bid up the price and you will actually get the item.
Look, you can pop a quarter into a parking meter and be on your way, or you can spend a half hour searching for loose change on the floor of your car in order to feed the meter the absolute least possible amount. I am not going to waste my time trying to game e-bay.
 

djohannsen

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Of course it matters. The previous poster was exactly correct. If you bid what you are actually willing to pay and no more, you have no need to snipe.
This applies only if you bid at the auction close (which is sniping, whether you do it manually or through a service). What clubby was talking about was the practice of putting in your "what I'm willing to pay" bid early in the auction. This practice will often make you pay significantly more for an item. The reason is that frequently there are bidders who place a bid that is under yours. They will stew for hours or days and come back and bid again. Repeat this a couple of times and even if you are the high bidder at the end, you have paid more than you would have by sniping. I call this "nibbling" by the under-bidder. If you had not put in your bid early, then the nibbler comes along, puts in his initial bid, is the high bidder, and just leaves it at that (hoping to be the high bidder at the close). This is how sniping can save you a significant amount of money. You don't have to look at too many bid histories to see the pattern that clubby and I have described. In fields of collectibles almost all bidding is done with sniping (I used to collect vintage fountain pens and when a desirable pen was listed, the bids would invariably shoot from $30 to $500-$600 in the last 3-4 seconds [people knew better than to let nibblers kill them]). Anyway, I wouldn't presume to tell people how to use eBay, so don't take this as preaching or anger on my part.


Dave
 

Philippe D.

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If you bid what you are actually willing to pay and no more, you have no need to snipe. If someone comes in at the last second and outbids you, it doesn't matter, because you weren't willing to pay that much anyway. Otherwise, you get the item for a price you were willing to pay.
What you say is 100% correct, but this bidding strategy also means you forego all hope of getting the item for less than you were willing to pay. The standard bidding system encourages bidders to underbid so that they still get a "benefit" (if your top price for an item is X, bidding X means if you win, you actually don't win since the price you pay for the item is exactly its worth to you). This means it also encourages last-second bids - if the high bid is still under your top price, you could still possibly get it for under your top price.

There's a bidding rule that encourages bidders to bid exactly their top price: every bid remains secret, you only bid once, and when time runs out, the top bidder wins, but he only pays the second highest bid. This ensures bidding your actual top price is the "best" strategy (it's what is called a Nash equilibrium), and also that, when you win, you'll end up paying less than your top price. But I don't know if this is ever actually used in practice (it also means lower selling prices, and eliminates the emotional part for the bidders, so it probably less favorable to sellers).
 

robh91

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I always use "sniping". The huge advantage it has is stopping you effectively "bidding against yourself" in regards to "incremental bidders". A lot of Ebayers (foolishly) bid like this. They place a bid of the minimum amount needed. They get outbid. They bid again (maybe straight away, maybe and hour later, maybe a few days later). They get outbid they bid again and so on and so on. Ebay is full of incremental bidders. They rethink, get emotive and rebid again at some later point in time. Snipers save $$ against such bidders.

Consider the two scenarios below.

SCENARIO ONE "NO SNIPING"
Say you see something you like with a current bid of $20 (from an incremental bidder who is prepared to go to $50) and you're prepared to pay $100. You set your max bid at $100 and forget about things. You become current bidder @ $21. The incremental bidder has a nother go. Now at $22. You auto bid to $23, he rebids etc etc until you autobid to $51 and he gives up. You win @ $51.

SCENARIO TWO "SNIPING"
The same facts as above except you use a sniping service and set it at $100. The incremental bidder is the high bidder at $20 until 5 seconds before the auction ends. You bid at five seconds (with max bid of $100) @$21. Unless he is watching the end (and is super quick) he won't get a chance to make a further incremental bid - done and dusted at $21 for the win. You saved $29 by not bidding against yourself.
 

djohannsen

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I always use "sniping". The huge advantage it has is stopping you effectively "bidding against yourself" in regards to "incremental bidders". A lot of Ebayers (foolishly) bid like this. They place a bid of the minimum amount needed. They get outbid. They bid again (maybe straight away, maybe and hour later, maybe a few days later). They get outbid they bid again and so on and so on. Ebay is full of incremental bidders. They rethink, get emotive and rebid again at some later point in time. Snipers save $$ against such bidders.
This is exactly the point that I was making with my description of "nibblers." You have described the situation with much more greater clarity, so perhaps now others will understand. Again, in fields that are highly collected (where eBay is hands down the greatest source for the items being collected [antiques, especially]), sniping is the only mode of bidding in the community. I've won about 1,300 auctions over well more than a decade at eBay (due largely to the days when I collected antique books and fountain pens) and the value of sniping couldn't be more obvious to me. (Again, sniping doesn't necessarily mean an automated service, it's simply that such a service is much more convenient and the cost is negligible compared to what it will save you.)
 
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