I listed my super-8 version (four 400’ reels, marked Part 1/8 through 4/8) of King Kong on eBay. As of now there are an even dozen people with the auction on their Watch Lists.
Given that they know there are a number of people who are watching the auction, which strategy would be the best for one of them to win the auction?
[ul][li]Try to snipe it in the last minute by offering a low-ball bid? (Possilby outbid by another sniper)[/li][li]Try to snipe it at the end by posting a high bid? (Outbidding other snipers)[/li][li]Placing a bid early to flush out the competition? (Possibly driving the price up)[/ul][/li]IME the best strategy for winning an auction is to snipe it with the maximum I’m willing to spend.
The best strategy is to bet the most you are willing to pay within the last 10 seconds or so. If you win, you will pay what you wanted or less depending on the other bids, if you lose it was worth more to someone else than you, get on with your life. I have found the number of folks watching an auction to not be a true indication that the item will sell. I listed an 1880’s Bible that is in very good condition with a low starting bid of $5 and with an hour to go in the auction had 8 folks watching the auction. I came back a few hours later to find the Bible did not sell. I asked why this would happen at the eBay forums and was told many people watching auctions are sellers, not buyers and they are watching the auction to gauge the interest in the item. I know I am currently watch a number of auctions for that exact reason.
Actually, it’s a common misconception that there’s any advantage at all to a strategy of sniping on eBay. The best strategy is to simply place a bid in the highest amount you would be willing to pay at any time during the auction. The initial bid entered for you will only be whatever multiple of the bidding increment is necessary for you to have the highest bid. eBay’s proxy bidding system will automatically raise your bid whenever someone else bids, up to and including the maximum bid you specified initially.
For example, if the starting bid on an item is $5, and you place a bid of $100, your initial bid will appear as $5. If someone else bids $10, your bid will automatically increase to $10 to match. Since your initial bid was first, you are still the high bidder on the item. If, in the last minute of the auction, some sniper comes in and tries to pick it off in small increments, he has no hope of becoming the high bidder until he places a bid higher than your initial bid of $100. There’s a good chance he will run out of time trying to place a long succession of dollar-at-a-time bids. Even if he does win it by bidding higher than $100, if $100 was the absolute maximum you were willing to spend, it’s no loss.
Meanwhile, you get to sit back and snicker at all the people who think they will gain some advantage by bidding in the last ten seconds. No mess, no stress!
You have to be a seller because the strategy you laid out only benefits the seller. Sellers love seeing the bids go up from proxy bids. Also, from what you wrote, you failed to understand what sniping is all about. There is no continuous bidding when you snipe. You only place one bid as late in the auction as possible. Snipe vs. no snipe has been discussed on these boards before, as well as ad nauseum on the eBay boards. There is no advantage for buyers to reveal their hands too early. Johnny and racer got it right: The best strategy for winning an auction is to snipe it with the maximum you’re willing to spend. This is from personal experience in almost 700 auctions. Every successful bidder on eBay realizes the futility in trying to win consistently via proxy bidding, unless the proxy bid is placed near the end of the auction.
In a perfect world, yes, but that’s not where Ebay is. You have the human factor to consider. People will set their max price, but if outbid and given enough time might reconsider that price.
Also on the supply and demand profile, by several bidders holding back till the last moment we have a lower apparent demand, which will lower the price - yes they will bid at the last moment, but all the bidders won’t shift the supply / demand price point that much higher as they have no time to compete with each other.
From the buyers point of view the ONLY way to buy is to snipe.
I agree, last minute bidding is the only way to go if you really want the thing. If you aren’t going to be heartbroken not to get it like with this auction (I bid 69 cents above the min. and was shocked to win) then it’s okay to bid hours earlier.
I’ve got a question, though, how do you know how many people have something on their watch-list? I saw an answer from a seller indicating that he knew 8 people were watching his item, but is there a place for bidders to find out too?
wow, does eBay not use an auto-extend feature on its auctions? Here in New Zealand the most popular auction site is Trade Me. If a bid is placed within two minutes of the auction’s end-time, the auction is extended by a further two minutes. If bids keep getting placed, the auction keeps extending, until someone places a bid which isn’t beaten within two minutes.
I guess there must be a legal reason why eBay doesn’t do this, as it is to everyone’s benefit (buyers don’t lose out to more efficient snipers, sellers get more money for their products, and the auction site makes more fees with the higher prices.)
I’m sorry for the slight hijack, but does anyone know why eBay doesn’t put something similar in place?
NO!
And keep that little tidbit to yourself!
Actually, I have bid on some closed auctions for industrial items where that 2 minute provision was in place. I think ebay sellers and ebay itself would love it.
Buyers on the other hand…would be furious. :mad:
Hmmm. Yes, I see that I was a bit hasty in my first assessment. I wasn’t really thinking about it that way. While it’s true that sniping in small increments at the last minute is silly, I hadn’t considered the benefits of placing your max bid late in the game.
I’d also like to apologize for the authoritative tone of my first post, which looks more and more silly to me now that I realize just how little thought I had actually put into this. :o
I’m guessing these responses are the “voices of experience.”
I initially made that mistake—and had my arse handed to me by the “professional snipers.” Now I do my research—sometimes days/weeks in advance–and know exactly how much I should pay and what my highest bid would be.
I set my clock and then I bid in the last 10 seconds----having a broadband connection helps. Amazingly, last month I bid $255.55 and another sniper bid $255.00. That .55¢ was the winning margin. (It was $105 with 5 minutes left!)
I want to also stress that this is flat out wrong. People are dumb. They do dumb things. Sniping takes advantage of people with poor bidding skills. If people were smart, then I’d agree.
It’s a mystery to me. It seems that eBay’s income could not decrease and would often increase were this scheme [self-extending deadlines] in place. They must surely have received the suggestion thousands of times.
The whole sniping approach seems silly and unnecessary, but under current rules it’s often a buyer’s best tactic.
Yes I have used 2 of them. The 1st was software that would place the bid from your computer at the time you specify. IIRC it cost $20, but lost the regristration code during a reformat.
The other one I used is esnipe, which does the same thing. They charge ‘points’ which you have to biy from them. points are deducted only on wins and you get a few points to start you out for free. You can check out esnipe.com to get current info.
They also allow some fairly complex bids, like if you want 2 of the same items and there are 5 auctions going, you can set it to stop after 2 are bought.
There is no need at all to either snipe or “place your bid at the last moment”. Both are- to a large extent- fallacies. The dude who places his max bid (called a proxy bid)early has a small advantage- the later bidders must outbid him by the bid increment. So, if “early bidder” places a bid of $51 (which will only show as “up to” $50), and “sniper” places a bid of $51 (or even $51.99 since I think the "bid increment is $1 at that point)- “early bidder” wins.
Now kanicbird brings up the small downside of bidding early- Bid wars. It used to be common- but now is very rare- for a bidder to bid, find that it isn’t enough, bid again a little higher- then lose all reason and start raising and re-raising until their bid beats yours. If you look at a random sample of auctions, you’ll find this is now EXREMELY rare, and it’s much more likely that you’ll lose your bid by the “bid increment” to the 'early bidder". However, even if you DO “lose an auction” this way- you still havn’t “lost” anything if you have placed your early bid at the max amount you are willing to pay (and there’s no reason to do anything else). All you just have “lost” is the opportunity to pay more for an item than you really wanted to pay!
OTOH, if you do “lose” an auction by being beat by the bid increment- then you have “lost”- you were willing to pay $X, but the ‘early bidder’ was also willing to pay “$x”- and thus he wins.
The real fallacy- and silly way of bidding- on eBay is to place a “lowball” bid, where you see an item that you’re willing to pay $50 for but you only bid $25. That gains you NOTHING- other to let “professional snipers hand your arse to you”. Yes, that Lowball bid does protect you from “shill bidding” but if you don’t trust the seller- why bid at all?
You *can’t * have your "arse handed to me by the “professional snipers” if you simply bid early and exactly the highest amount you’re willing to pay. In fact, you’ll beat those “professional snipers” by the "bid increment’ edge you have over them.
Sniping cost you money, time & effort, and gains you nothing- even of you are against a “lowball” bidder, if you just place you max bid you still either win- or lose and when you lose in this way you don’t lose at all, as you just have “lost” the opportunity to pay more for an item than you really wanted to pay!
At times my Dad looses out by a few pence or pounds and wonders endlessly if the other bidder really did only bid a few more pence or pounds more at the last minute and not tens of pounds more.
And I wouldn’t write off the bidding wars so glibbly, I’ve seen people apparantly new to EBay do that often enough. I bid on the first of four second hand PCs a seller had put on sale. I came back to find the auction over and saw someone with feedback of 2 IIRC had bid repeatedly against me to win the auction, even with three other identical items on sale to end within minutes of the first. I felt like emailing him to ask if there was anything special about the one I bid on to make him bid against me in such a manner
I use auctionstealer. It’s free for up to three auctions per week. And I don’t bid more than that. It will post your bid as little as 10 seconds before the end of the bid, between 20 and 10 seconds is the range.
I got sniped at first. You learn. If people are too dumb to learn, this is one ebay bidder who’s not going to have any sympathy for them.
Not on the stuff I bid on. Either I’m the only bidder or there’s a bidding war. I follow the bids and I frequently see people post multiple bids on the same item.
I’m going to brag. There was an item I wanted. I had seen them for sale on ebay stores, but the price was way too high. Then three of them came up for sale through auction. The first one was from the U.K. and had a higher starting bid. The other two were from the same seller and their auctions ended a day later. They had a much lower opening bid and lower shipping. In one of the best strategic bits of ebay thinking (okay, other than sniping, the only strategic ebay thinking I’ve ever done) I figured the following:
Most people would bid on the later two items. Opening bid was lower and the shipping was much lower for here in the US.
This would then keep people from bidding on the first item, keeping that price low.
People wouldn’t start bidding on the first item until the bids on the other two exceeded the bid + shipping on the first one.
That would be relatively close to the end of auction for the first one, not giving as much time for the bids to skyrocket.
People wouldn’t bid as high on the first one knowing there were two other identical items.
Therefore, out of all three items my best reasoning told me to go for the first one.
I did and I got it. The other two ended up going for substantially more than what I paid (50 to 60% more even allowing for the higher shipping rates and currency exchange I had to do) so my reasoning worked out perfectly.
It may sound minor, but I was pretty proud of the case I had built and how accurate in every step it proved to be.
Hmmm… that sounds more like shill bidding on the part of the seller to me, or it would if you’d told me that you got a second chance offer because the newbie didn’t follow through.
