I’m currently selling a pocket watch on ebay. The auction has been running for 4 days and has 3 days to go. There are currently 4 bids, from 4 different buyers. Each bid was the minimum: $2.50 above the previous bid. Since each bid only increased the price by $2.50, the buyers are apparently not yet entering the highest price they’ll pay, but just entering a single minimum bid.
I think it’s well known that most of the activity on an ebay auction happens in the last hour or so as people wait to see what happens and then try to snipe or just get their bid in at the last minute. What puzzles me is why there are already 4 bids, days before the end. The first bid arrived within an hour of when the auction opened. All four bidders seem to be very experienced, with thousands of transactions each. Why would they make bids days in advance? It seems to me that bidding early can only increase the final price, as potential bidders see that the item has a lot of interest and may think, “well, if I really want this, maybe I should increase my highest bid”. I’ve seen discussion (including several on this board) about whether sniping is useful. But whether it is or not, is there any actual advantage to bidding early?
Why not bid early? You see something listed for what you think is a cheap price, you think “I’d pay that cheap price for that” and you shoot your shot and bid that cheap price.
If someone outbids you you think “welp, I guess I’m not going to get it for that cheap price. Oh well.” and that’s it.
I personally don’t like to deal with eBay bidding shenanigans. I will type in the price I’m willing to pay and that’s it. If I get outbid, so be it.
It’s possible the people bidding the minimum on your item are flippers and looking for a great deal that they could warehouse and sell later. It costs them nothing to try to get it at the lowest possible price.
Well, sometimes you get items for a very low price, if nobody else bothers to bid and there’s no minimum.
Or if you create a lot of activity upfront, it might create the illusion of competition and discourage other bidders.
There’s probably a whole lot of auction psychology at work in such a scenario. But if you know the maximum you’re willing to pay and don’t mind the FOMO, you don’t have to play those games.
Sometimes you get lucky and the other bidder(s) gets distracted or otherwise preoccupied at closing. Those early bids are “what do I have to lose?” prices. A small bid also works as a bookmark of sorts for items of interest.
It gives you a feel if others are interested in the item so you can better watch (or not watch) the auction in the last 120 seconds.
Knowing that you have someone who wants to start a bidding war early is useful knowledge. Or it could be a sock bidding on his own stuff to try and drive the cost up
Bid early on rare items or face missed-bidding remorse. The regret of losing an auction becasue I tried some trick has done its job.
I used to try sniping or little test bidnibs or other tricks but I don’t buy stuff like that anymore. Too much effort and, for me, I’d goof by forgetting about the auction or a login/network error at exactly the wrong moment. That’s ok for a Nintendo controller or a printer cartridge, I’ll go for the next one. But there are a lot of things I don’t expect to see soon/ever for sale again and those need to get the bid placed in plenty of time.
I’ve been using liveauctioneers.com lately, really interesting just to browse and I’m getting the most fascinating items. I like to browse auctions within an hour’s drive, the website makes it easy to search those.
That’s what I was thinking. I haven’t used eBay, but there’s probably an easy link to see a list of all of the auctions you’re bidding on.
Isn’t that the way eBay works? You set your maximum, and then the system automatically increases your bid to outbid others, but only up to your maximum, and nobody sees what your maximum actually is.
I suppose that the first three must have set a low maximum (though not necessarily quite as low as what’s seen), but the fourth bidder could have bid anything and still show up that way.
You can “watch” an item which puts it in a list for you. There’s no need to bid on it to keep a link to it.
If any of the first three bidders had set a maximum, the bid would have automatically increased after the next bidder bid. So I assume they set no maximum. (I had set a starting bid of $100. The bids were $100, $102.50, $105, and $107.50.)
Sure, but people are gonna people. Some folks just develop a habit of a particular process, and then keep on using that process even if there’s something simpler they could do.
I’ve indeed paid out the nose for some shipping. Once last year was $80 for a framed document (Gaaah, justrunthecard!) and just part of the price. I’m happy with my all-in cost for the item, my max bid was almost twice the hammer price, and, the seller really did a great job packing, but dang, that’s a lot on top of the (already high) Buyer’s fee and the credit card handling. Locally, it’s 10% Illinois sales tax so I got that goin’ for me.
Keep me in mind for pickup of Chicago area items. I’m in Mich often enough.
In exchange, I need you to pick up a 48 x 60 inch gilt mirror in Ypsi and hold it for me till Christmas. I’ll pm the address, it’s fragile gesso so be careful. Kthkxbye.
In truth, I don’t think many eBay bidders really think about their strategy. There are some basic approaches: bid early with your set maximum; bid early bid often; wait until the last moment (aka “sniping”), to name a few. I think each bidder’s strategy is the one that fits with their tolerance for risk and how they’d feel about missing out on an item.
I actually studied bidding and auctions. Not scholarly research, but I had a job designing a competitive sales system that was supposed to maximize the sale price. One interesting thing I learned by reading the scholarly literature is that typical ascending bid auctions (which the vast majority of auctions are) don’t yield the highest potential price for any item, but the second highest price. The winning bidder only has to pay what the second highest bidder is willing to pay plus an increment, but the winning bidder probably would have been willing to pay more. The competitive nature of the auction didn’t require a higher bid. Sealed bids get around that, but it’d be harder to design a sealed bid for an eBay-type enterprise.
As an aside, the method I always wanted clients to try was the descending bid, where the house sets the starting bid, then starts lowering the price until somebody offers to pay it. It’s a lot like playing ‘chicken’. Since first bid wins, everybody sits around, figuratively (sometimes literally, if it’s in-person) eye-balling the competition until somebody blinks and the gavel drops. The only catch to a descending bid sale is the house MUST set the opening bid far above what anybody would pay. If they undervalue the item, they again leave $$ on the table. Potentially a LOT of $$.
For an item that I’m curious about, I’ll put it on my watch list, simply so it’s easy to find again. But if I’m really interested in buying it, I’ll put in a bid about 25%-50% less than similar items have sold before, partly to get a good deal, but also so I get an automated email if I’m outbid. That lets me know that it’s worth something to someone else, and I’m not the only fool chasing it. It also gives me some time to mull the purchase and think how I’d feel if I didn’t win the auction.
The last auction I “won” was one that I didn’t win. About a week after the auction ended, I got an email and eBay message from the seller, who said the high bidder had ghosted him without paying. “As the second highest bidder, would I be interested in buying the item?”, as a second chance. Since it was a fair price and a relatively rare item, I took him up on the offer, and received the item which was exactly as described.
I did consider that it might have been a sock seller, who had kept bumping up bids himself, but backed out of the final sale. I don’t know how you can tell, but since the price was reasonable I consider it a good deal.
That happened to me twice in 25 years on eBay. Both times I was asked (as 2nd highest bidder) if I wanted the item but not at MY bid, but the bid of the “winner” who then backed out. I refused both times on principle. I felt I should have been allowed to buy it at MY price. I assume they just went to the next one in line and asked them.
It never occurred to me that I might have been “socked”, so to speak.
Assuming by “sealed bids” you mean a system by which bidders put in their best bid and the bids aren’t revealed during the process - such a system doesn’t necessarily yield the highest potential price, or the most bidders would have been willing to pay, either.
Buyers often gauge the market by reference to what others are bidding. In a sealed bid auction, there is a real chance bidders who would have been prepared to pay more will be cautious about doing so in a sealed bid that may significantly exceed the market.
Yeah, there are two different ways I personally bid on eBay: For items that I see and somehow feel that I absolutely must possess, I will bid as late as possible and bid high - I’m prepared to pay over the regular market price, because I want the thing, or want this specific example of the thing.
For items I stumble across and think “Oh, I wouldn’t mind having one of those if the price was right”, I throw in what I consider to be a ‘right’ price as soon as I see it. This doesn’t often result in a win, but it lays that casual desire to rest and very occasionally, it results in a pleasant bargain.
I’ve seen numerous discussions on the SDMB and elsewhere about sniping in which those complaining about the practice said that it was unfair because until they saw other people’s bids, they didn’t know how much they were prepared to bid. It was pointed out to them that due to eBay’s auto-bid feature they could always nominate the maximum they were prepared to pay while being confident that they would never pay much more than what someone else would pay. Yet even then they would still complain because they would say the only way they could know their own mind about the maximum they were prepared to pay was by seeing what others were bidding.
Some auction sites – in view of this sort of complaint about sniping – have (or used to have) a feature by which a last moment bid would cause the auction to be extended by a period of time to allow others to increase their bids - which demonstrates the prevalence of the sentiment.
Having participated in and and read these discussions extensively I have no doubt about the conclusion that – if some people irrationally won’t even enter the most they’re prepared to pay when auto bidding “has their back” - such people certainly won’t put in their top bid when quite rationally it could result in them paying very substantially more than anyone else was prepared to bid – which is the effect of a “sealed bid” auction.