Do EBay Auction Snipers Really Work?

Factual Questions
41

You have forgot one thing. Bored people. I often have bid on things on eBay, simply to drive the price up. I KNOW that I will be outbid. So if I see something I don’t want but I know in the past it has sold for say 50.00, I’ll bid $40.00. Stupid? YES!! But I’ve never been caught. I just want to jack the price up.

I have also done this for my friends. They say my item isn’t selling for what I want, bid on it. I do. If I win, my friend doesn’t report me as a non paying bidder. So thus I can get MORE positive feedback and so can he.
All he owes is the commission to eBay.

Further more if I do want an item for say $50.00 my first bid(s) are up to $40.00. That is if they bid is zero I bid the lowest. If it is 10.00. I’ll bid 11 and keep bidding till I win. Let’s say I win at 30.00. Then I got 2 days to go. The guy I out bid will usually rebid and out bid me. I increase it dollar by dollar between me and him. Then I quit at $40.00. The guy I was bidding for thinks OK he quit. He doesn’t want it. And will be bidding probably around 50.00. So I snipe in at 51.43 or some weird amount. Thus I get it.

The feedback is pretty useless, for example I had one seller refuse to sell me what I won. He said he didn’t get enough money for it. I said I would report him and leave neg feedback. He said he’d just leave neg feedback for me and say I was the deadbeat. What can you do?

42

Well, my example is insane. But, a lot of items are one-of-a-kind and people have been looking for them for a long time.

I’ve been fortunate to see books languish all week long at $15 and end up at $600.

Looking at my latest auction history, I’ve noticed that my last 3 auctions were all semi-nuclear sniped at $200 each, and I got them for an average of $7 apiece

I would have gladly paid $200 for each, however.

Who can say? Who can say every buyer is rational?

-P

43

Some people must have really wanted this new folder for Windows XP :eek:

BTW, I ALWAYS snipe all of the Ebay auctions I ever bid on. The only exception is if there are no bids, then I’ll bid the minimum and not come back until the end of the auction, when I snipe away. I’m quite convinced that this has saved me mucho dinero.

44

NUCLEAR SNIPE…This is a very rare occurence. Most snipers bid their true max. But occasionally a couple of idiot snipers (a very rare breed) come along and bid an outrageous amount in the last seconds. Their bids meet and the result is a nuclear snipe. The proxy battle raises the price to an unbelievably high amount in seconds. Nuke snipers have very short lives on ebay.

(From some webpage)
Let’s face it. Bidding on many things on eBay isn’t rational. I don’t need another book. Joyce doesn’t need another beanie baby.
To some degree, all sniped are nuclear snipes. Altho in most cases, admittedly low ones.

45

Wow, at least you’ve got the balls to admit that you’re a shill.

Your friends should learn how to set up their auctions using reserve prices or high enough minimum prices. That way, you wouldn’t have to help them cheat.

46

So, based on experience and the economics paper posted by Jayrot, it seems that sniping is a rational strategy for one type of scenario:

two bidders: Sally Sniper and Joe Dirt
Joe will frequently query the current high bid and manually increase his bid. He will not use the proxy bidder.
Sally will wait until the “hard close” time, and place one bid that exceeds Joe’s.
Sally will win.

Would that be the consensus?

What would be the most rational eBay strategy for Sally Sniper vs. Sammy Sniper? IOW, two snipers waiting until the last minute. By definition, one will be last and get the bid, but what is Sally’s best strategy for winning? (Note: “best strategy” does not include having a fast mouse finger or nerves to wait until 1 second before the close – that’s luck.)

47

Here’s the thing, though. If what you say is true, you’re not actually driving the final price up at all. If you KNOW that somebody’s going to bid more than $40, bidding $40 doesn’t increase the final price.

48

Actually, if the previous person high bid is more than the second highest, IE: Sammy bids $80 and Sally bids $100, then our buddy up there, bidding $90 will cost Sally $10-11.

And what he’s doing is against eBay’s rules too.

One more tip: If you are bidding on things easily available elsewhere, IE: electronics and such, I rarely pay more than 60% of retail before shipping. I’m in Canada, so when I add on Duty, it rarely pays.

Books, too. I’ve seen books available from ABE.COM go on ebay for huge multiples. For some reason. Again, same deal. If I can get it on abe for $10, I’ll not bid $11, unless the bidder is local or the $10 vendor won’t take Paypal or something silly.

49

Isn’t this a direct violation of eBay rules?

50

That’s not the situation he’s talking about, though. He’s talking about things that he knows will sell for $100 whether he bids or not. “I often have bid on things on eBay, simply to drive the price up. I KNOW that I will be outbid. So if I see something I don’t want but I know in the past it has sold for say 50.00, I’ll bid $40.00.”

Now, I really don’t think he possesses the prescience to determine the price before the end of the auction, but if we assume for the minute he does, then he’s not actually changing it.

51

Yes

The same as the strategy aginst Joe Dirt. Bid what you are willing to pay for the item with only a few seconds left. If Sally’s bid is higher than Sammy’s, Sally wins. If not, that’s OK, it sold for more than Sally was willing to pay and she can wait for the next one.

Getting the bid in with 1 second left is not the best strategy. There is a slight edge to getting your bid in a bit earlier. Somewhere around 7 to 10 seconds left seems about right - late enough that Joe Dirt can’t react, early enough that you are probably the first snipe in.

Let’s assume you have an auction with 4 bidders, Joe Dirt, Jane Mud, Sally Sniper, and Sammy Sniper. The bids are place like this:

auction starts, initial price $5
5 days remaining, Jane bids $20 (current price: $5)
4 days remaining, Joe bids $10, $12, $14, $16, $25 (current price: $21)
3 days remaining, Jane bids $22, $23, $28 (current price: $26)
last day, Joe Bids $27, $28, $35 (current price: $29)
last minute: Jane bids $30, $35, $50 (current price: $36)
last 30 seconds: Joe bids $40, $45, $50 (current price: $50, Jane still winning)
8 seconds: Sally snipes $51 (current price: $51)
2 seconds: Sammy snipes $51.99

Auction over, Sally wins at a price of $51.

Guess why? Sammy’s snipe wasn’t a full bid increment higher than Sally’s snipe, and Sally’s snipe got there first. If Sammy sniped with 10 seconds remaining, he would have won at $51.

52

Definitely a practice that will get you banned by eBay when they find out:

Shill Bidding: What It Is and Why It’s Not Permitted on eBay

53

This post is kind of late since I left it in the preview screen overnight instead of submitting it. Excuse the stuff that has already been exampled to death.

This is what I have observed also. You need to take into account that an auction is more than just a sale. To some it becomes a competition.

I race stock cars. I used to go to several racing related auctions every winter. They were held in big auditoriums. Besides a weekend long auction, there are also vendors selling new parts. Many of the vendors will also send new parts through the auction. With a racing auction, you end up with a lot of very competitive people in one place. Once you add in a few beers, things get rediculous. I guess no one is totally stupid. The real junk still doesn’t sell for much. However, you often see some of the new items selling for more in the auction than what you could buy them for from a vendor 50 feet away. I have witnessed this probably hundreds of times.

For example, you will see sticks of roll cage padding go for $5.00/stick in the auction. There will be several vendors selling it for $3.50-$4.00/stick. The competitive aspect of bidding against someone causes people to bid more than the should.

The problem with bidding your maximum right away on eBay is that you have people who will keep bumping their bids just to see how much you bid or to beat you. Say you don’t snipe. You bid your maximum of $50 for a widget, but you get the current bid for $25.00. Chances are you will see someone (we will call them nimrod_00 making 5-10 bids trying to beat you. They will go up $5.00 at a time or something. I have seen it many times in eBay. It ends up with nimrod_00 getting the bid at $51.00 or something like that. Now the ball is back in your court. Is it really worth more than $50 to you? Now you agonize until the end of the auction trying to decide.

Now take the same example but use sniping. Say someone has their maximum at $30 for the widget with the current bid at $25. Nimrod_00 comes along and starts trying to find the maximum. He finally gets the bid for $30.50 with his maximum at $35.00. He may even get nervous with a few minutes left and increase his maximum to $40.00. Now you come in with 10 seconds to go and bid your real maximum of $50.00. The dust settles and you have your widget for $40.50.

No, this doesn’t work all of the time. It doesn’t do anything when people bid their maximum and go away as some have mentioned. However, it does save the sniper money when people like nimrod_00 are also bidding on the item.

Anyway, do what you want. Just remember there definitely is psychology involved in an auction (live or online) and it is a competition.

54

Thanks for the explanation. I can see why you might want to do this. However, I think this won’t do any good if even one person is using eBay’s proxy bidding scheme. You’re depending on you and nimrod being the only interested parties.

55

Remember CurtC, there are an awful lot of nimrods out there on eBay.

And i’ll re-iterate what the fellow up there said about Stock Car Padding. At Magic Auctions I go to, I’ve often seen used equipement go for more than new, and the new is on the shelf one meter away!

Here’s a Joke related to Auctions, btw:

I was at a Magic Auction, and this fellow had purchased a load of stuff at retail hoping to become the next copperfield.

Anyhow. All of it was for sale at the next auction. I needed one of the things he was selling, so I bid. I just bid all the way up to the cost of a full retail one (Stupid, I know, but here comes the joke)

No one outbid me, and the dealer offered me a choice: The new one on the shelf or the one this fellow used to own.

I took the one auctioned. Why? I wanted the one that had never been used.

-P

One last thing: Prices for things sold on auction are based on supply and demand. For example, anyone can go to the Valentine 1 Web Site and buy a new one for $399. So, you’ll never see an auction go for more than that.

Now, if Valentine was to go out of business, or stop making it, that would be a different story.

Uniden made a really cool scanner that picked up “Mobile Extenders” that police use to talk to hq. Great backup to a radar detector.

Well, they stopped making it. When they were making them, you could have all you wanted at $99.

Now, you’re lucky to get one at $199. or higher.

If something is still being made, bidding early is a possibility, and unlikely to cost you much.

If it’s rare, you’re better off sniping.

(Altho I still maintain it’s better to snipe in both cases, just the different, er, the delta snipe is greater in the second)

-P

56

First off. Let me apologize for the length. The OP asked for tips.

I was going to write a book on sniping, and defending yourself against snipers. (It was going to be called: The Snipers Guide to Ebay.) But there are already several books out on Ebaying and most of them cover sniping. (They all do miss one critical tactic though, covered later.)

The reason sniping is good strategy is that,** even though you THINK that you have a personal maximum, you will almost always be willing to go an extra .25 to win the bid.** But too many .25 can add up to big bucks. You can really only know your personal maximum amount seconds before close when you have just been outbid. Snipers realize this.

To be a truly effective sniper, there are some things one should take into consideration. To ensure absolute success, it takes work, maybe too much work. But if there is an item that you absolutely have to have, then you should learn all about sniping, even if you don’t believe that it works. You want to protect your own bids, and you do that by preparing to snipe an auction you are already winning. If no one snipes, then you don’t snipe. Otherwise you are all ready to win.

Here are several things to think about while sniping.[list=1]
[li]The item. As some of you have noted, the type of auction plays a key role in your success. Some markets just don’t work for the sniper, like in Skeptico’s RCA example. In that case, bid first, bid higher than you are willing, or lose. But since prices on Ebay are generally lower than retail you don’t have to worry about this. Depending on the value of the targeted item, you could save at least $10 by sniping. Some markets are very popular so snipers can’t really take advantage of the edge. Take something very popular, like the newest graphics card. Most people know the value of the card and they know how much the going price is. It would really be a waste of time to snipe a card in the hopes of saving $10 or more. You might save a buck or two, but not much more. The item’s too popular.[/li]
[li]Market value. You should look at completed auctions. While preparing for a snipe, I’ll do a search for something except I’ll check the button that says completed items only. With that I can easily figure out the market value, give or take $20 or so. Realistically I might be able to get the low end of the market value, but probably not much below it, if any. It would be stupid to snipe for a higher price when others have got a lower price by not sniping, so I won’t snipe above the high end of the market value. If the item is very popular the difference between the high market value and the low market value will be very small. Maybe as low as $10. If it’s that low then it’s probably not a good item to snipe.[/li]
[li]The snipers. While I’m looking at the completed auctions, I’ll take a look at the bids to see if there are any snipers targeting the object of my desire. Any low auctions are suspect. If there is a particular item that is generally going for $250 and I find one that went for $220 there’s either something wrong with that particular item or it might have been sniped. I’ll look at the bids and compare the bid times to the auction deadline. Analyze the bids and find your snipers. Write their names down.[/li]Be careful though. With proxy bidding, just because someone’s bid time is 5 seconds before the end of the deadline doesn’t mean he was the sniper. He might have already had a proxy bid in high enough to defeat a stupid sniper. Just look at the previous bids to see if he already bid. The guy right before him was the sniper.

[li]Analyze the snipers’ (and non-snipers’) habits. (This is the secret no book covers. This requires a lot of work.) Just because there’s a sniper targeting your item, it doesn’t mean you can’t beat him. And actually because he IS sniping you might still get your item lower than high market value, though probably not below low market value. Once you find a sniper, check him out. Ebay lets you search for usernames. Do that and check out his habits. See what his snipe time is. Is it 30 seconds before close? Is it 10 seconds? Write that down. He may not have a preference if he’s manually sniping, but if he’s using a sniping program then he is probably using some default time. Set your bid time with this in mind. Keep in mind the earlier bidder who bids the same amount will win, while the later bidder, if his bid is high enough, will prevent other people from outbidding him just because they won’t have the time to outbid him. It sucks to set your snipe time to 10 seconds only to discover that your max bid was $1 too small. An extra 10 seconds could give you a chance to re-snipe.[/li]
Look at ALL of the markets the sniper is targeting. Get the high and low market value of his targets and compare his winning prices to those market prices. Then you should be able to get an idea about how high he is willing to go while targeting your item. Keep in mind that his winning bid might be lower than his maximum bid.

And finally, check out his bid offset. Many ebayers don’t bid in dollar increments. They’ll add $.03 or $1.12 or something to what they consider their absolute maximum bid because it’s happened to all of us hasn’t it? You THINK you won’t go higher than $50, but then 30 seconds before the end of the auction someone outbids you by a $1 and then you start questioning yourself. Dang! I wish I had bid $51! I think most of us would be willing to spend an extra $1 if it means we’ll win the auction. But you have to decide where to draw the line. Look at enough of the sniper’s bids and you can find out where he drew his.[/list=1]If I really want an item, I’ll figure out the upper market value and see if I want to go that high. Then I’ll start my sniping program, Auction Sentry (definitely worth the $15 just because it makes bidding easy, even if you don’t snipe.) and enter the item number, synchronize the clock to Ebay’s time, and I’ll set the first snipe 30 seconds before deadline to bid the amount I decided I want. If I get beat by a dollar or two I’ll still have plenty of time to rebid up to my personal maximum. I know, I should make that first bid my personal maximum. But believe me, YOU DO NOT KNOW YOUR PERSONAL MAXIMUM UNTIL YOU ARE ABOUT TO LOSE THE AUCTION AND THERE ARE ONLY SECONDS LEFT TO DECIDE!! On most things anyway. If I REALLY REALLY want the item I’ll make my second bid the market value or I’ll even go over the market value a bit, if there is a market value. For over 6 months, I’ve been looking for an alarm clock. I am willing to pay $100 for it but it’s just a stinking regular alarm clock, (with some features I can’t live without). No one is going to spend more than $40 for it, but I will because I know the features.

I lost an auction last night for a dollar and believe me I was pissed. I wasn’t sniped. The guy bid 10 minutes before close so it was my fault I wasn’t paying attention. But I definitely would have bid $2 more. In fact I was upset with myself for not putting in $42.17 instead of $40 from the start. That’s why I wanted to snipe the auction I was already winning: to protect myself against other snipers, when I decided I wanted to raise my maximum bid. I got into watching Friends though. :slight_smile: Didn’t set up my sniper program.

If you don’t want to get a sniping program. Get the browser Opera and use that as your sniping program. It’s adware (not spyware) so it doesn’t cost money. It renders web pages faster than any other browser (which is important in sniping) and most importantly, you can right click on a web page and have it automatically reload the webpage at an interval of your choosing. Have it reload one window every 3-5 seconds. Have a second window ready to bid, all the fields filled in already. The second you see that you’ve been outbid, FAST hit CTRL+Tab and hit Enter!

Nuclear sniping is of course going to beat a normal sniper, but it is very risky if he runs into another nuclear sniper.

57

You’ve got it backwards. Sniping is worth it if there is at least one nimrod bidding on an item. 3 examples:

Item starts at $10
Judy bids $50, price $10
Mike bids $100, price $51
Nimrod bids $52, $62, $72, $82, $122, price is $101
Mike bids $150, wins at $123
Item starts at $10
Judy bids $50, price $10
Nimrod bids $11, $21, $31, $41, $71, price is $51
Mike snipes $100, wins at $72
Items starts at $10
Nimrod bids $10, price is $10
Judy snipes $50, price is $11
Mike snipes $100, price is $51
Obviously Mike is most happy with example 3, but example 2 is much better than example 1.

58

Well written Prisoner.

You’re right, most people don’t have the steely determination to set a bid and stick to it. If bidding for something rare, it’s tough to be objective about a maximum price.

I’ll just add that a lot of people refresh the BID HISTORY screen, because of fewer graphics, jingles and whatnot. It’s faster.

And searching to find previous bidders “highs” and habits are good ideas too. That’s another plus to sniping, albeit minor. If you snipe and are outsniped on your way to snipe, your bid doesn’t register and there’s less info for someone to use against you.
One more thing: There are a lot of obsolete accessories out there on eBay, dirt cheap for just about anything. Me, I love my olde HP IIP printer, and I’ve picked up a face up delivery tray and Add In Fax Card for under $10 shipped.

New, they were $30 and $300.

(And yes, I sniped them both. Habit!)

59

Uh, defending? I think this is a little too emotionally involved.

The simplest way to win an eBay auction is to snipe what you think it is worth. If it is worth more to somebody else, then they will win, and that’s fine. Another will come along eventually.

Maybe you don’t, but I know my maximum. I decide, and snipe accordingly. If I win, great, if not, next time.

You **DO[\b] know your maximum. You even stated it in the first paragraph. It is $100. If you had sniped $100, you would have got it for $42.17, or maybe even for less (assuming the other guy bid up your proxy). No hand wringing, delving into the psyche of your fellow bidder, or missing Friends.

If I were looking for an alarm clock, I’d do a search on eBay for what is there and pick out some that are acceptable to me. Let’s say I found 3 of them). I’d create a text file:

super-duper alarm clock. Willing to pay $110, including shipping

quantity=1
987239324 100

$25 for shipping?!? What a rip!

982743982 85

questionable seller, I think it is worth the risk at this price

982738990 75

Then fire up my sniper. It will snipe away until it either wins one or it is out of auctions to snipe. I can look at the terminal window (command line window, for Windows users) to see the status, but I normally find out that I win by receiving the winning bid notification in my email.

Total time invested: 10 minutes, mostly to do the search
Total time playing internet psychoanalyst: 0 minutes
Total nervous breakdowns: 0

60

If this is the case, then you don’t know yourself as well as you should. The solution isn’t sniping; it’s to think harder about how much you want something, before you place your bid. But “logic” like that is what leads to people bidding more than retail for an item, as several posters referred to.