Yes, for many of us that are rigidly black & white, it seems quite obvious what the ebay math game actually is. A maximum is a maximum is a maximum. Submit that damn amount whatever it is.
This may open a whole can of worms but I offer 2 theories as to this inconsistent definition of “maximum.”
#1 – People have a natural tendency to think in discrete rounded intervals of prices. Eg. $14.00 to $15.00 to $16.00. In these cases, a sniper can put $15.01 and win. The inexperienced bidders “maximum” was $15.00 … but he didn’t REALIZE his maximum could have been $15.01 or even $15.99. It’s the nice even number of $16.00 that sets his breaking point. He wasn’t aware of his own psychological bias for $15.99 vs $16.00.
#2 – People have a 80% to 90% idea of their “maximum” but it’s a ceiling that hasn’t been battle tested in a real auction. Once they see that other bidders are willing to bid higher, they have no time to re-evaluate how badly they really wanted the item. It was only the final seconds of a sniper’s bid that solidifies what that the TRUE maximum might have been. For some items, you can’t form your own opinion of a true maximum unless you know the maximum bids of others.
I just commented on how snipers not bidding their maximum any old time as they advise others (because of the fluid nature of the “maximum” bid or the “15.01 syndrome”) furrowed my brow slightly. I got over it.
For a given item, if someone asked you “would you want it for $5?”, the answer may be a definite yes. But “would you want it for $50” may be a much harder question to answer. You may have to think about it, do some research to find out how much similar items sell for elsewhere, etc.
I think most people have a somewhat fluid maximum in practice.
If I’d bid £15 for an item and Ebay phoned me up and said that someone had bid £14.51 - would I like to up my bid to £15.01 (to overcome the bid increment) and continue with the auction, I’d say no.
If they phoned up and said that the bidding had reached £14.51 and if I bid £15.01 I would definitely win I’d say, yes.
As far as my strategy for choosing my max I always make sure that its at a level where I would have seriously mixed feelings about winning, so that winning and having to pay my max would make me equally happy or remorseful as losing by 1 cent.
One more quick question while we’re on the subject of Ebay.
Suppose I’m interested in buying the Minnesota Barby with jello salad and hotdish accessories.
The opening price is $5.00. I bid $20.00 Somebody else later snipes at $15.00. Do I win with $15.00 since I bid first or does price go up to $15.50 as the next increment above what another would pay.
If the later, then if the sniper also bid exactly $20.00 who would win? It seems that I should since I bid $20 first.
What if the sniper bid $20.01, (above my bid but less than the next increment)
If the earlier bid always precedence than it appears that sniping is almost guaranteed to lose you one bidding increment.
Whoever has the highest bid at the time of the auction close wins. Whoever bid an equal bid first wins in a tie since the other bidder has not outbid the earlier one.
A good rule of thumb is to have your max bid end in 50 cents - $20.50, for example. More people bid in whole numbers than not, so you have a slight advantage over them.
Given the increment bidding pattern E-bay uses, does this bid pattern make sense to anyone? It’s for an advance copy of a book coming out at the end of September…book retail price is $32.
Oh, ok. So, I guess the only real question is why somebody would pay $53 for a book that comes out in less than a month and you can get on Amazon for $19.
Maybe the buyer is a blog writer and hopes to write one of the first book reviews that draws traffic to his site with clickable advertisements. The commission from the ads offsets the higher purchase price from ebay.
Maybe he’s a middleman for a buyer who doesn’t have an ebay account but wants an early copy of the book as soon as possible. This buyer is headed to a safari deep into Africa next week and want a copy of this book as a companion. The African village he’s going to has no internet access and Amazon wouldn’t deliver there anyway.
This is not true at all - you will win more often if you submit your true maximum on Day 7 (snipe).
This is a game theory problem, and the issue people are having is that they aren’t considering the behavior of “nibbler” bidders. If you accept these people exist, on any auctions at all, then you should always snipe. By my definition a nibbler bidder will bid his starting bid, then up his bid in small increments until he is winning the auction. This bidder is essentially not using Ebay’s proxy system and has his true maximum in his head. (And this all assumes true maximum even exists for all bidders, which is probably demostrably false)
Example:
Nibbler’s true maximum is $30
Your true maxium is $25
You bid on Day 1. Nibbler bids on Day 5, driving auction up to $26 in $1 increments, where he stops bidding because he is winning the auction.
Auction has no bids on Day 5, nibbler bids whatever his initial bid is, say $10. Since he is now winning the auction, he leaves his bid alone, You bid $25 on Day 7 at the last second. You win the auction for $11, both saving you money AND winning you an auction you otherwise would have lost
Sorry I should have made my comment clear; unfortunately the context was split across 2 different posts. My statement of “true maximum” assume that the person has the highest winning bid. If he truly has the highest winning bid, it doesn’t matter whether it’s day 1 or day 7. The “highest winning bid” in this case means working backwards from what the winning (hidden) max proxy bid was – the context was $1 million (not $25). Mathematically, it doesn’t matter what day that $1 million bid was placed. It’s the highest bid period.
Nibblers can nibble all they want. They still have to beat the $1 million bid.
Snipers can snipe all they want. They also have to beat the $1 million bid.
But it’s interesting how your post supports my position that sniping is more time-efficient. You contemplate checking out an item then setting a time to return and bid. This will take longer than simply entering your snipe bid at the time you spot an interesting auction.
(As you at least hint, it’s quite silly to count the time - a few minutes - that it takes to get set up with a sniping service, since this will be amortized over many auctions.)
Unless you qualify “showing up at the moment the auction ends to make your bid” as sniping, which is what everyone has pretty much been doing this entire time. As such, my post doesn’t support your argument at all. I have absolutely ZERO interest in setting up a proxy sniping account*. If I want to snipe, I have to do it manually. For me, that is a giant pain in the ass, and will result in me winning fewer auctions because I will simply not be arsed to go through the trouble. So I’m just going to continue to put in my max bid when I discover the item (unless it’s an item that I feel I have quite a bit to gain by waiting until the Zero Hour), pay the extra 39 cents that I lost because I’m not as cool as the other cats, and go on my way.
*Bully for you if you’ve been using such a program for years, and you bid on trillions of auctions a day saving the GNP of Costa Rica every month as a result - that’s the perfect time to do it. I don’t. I bid on maybe 5 items a year. I simply don’t want another password out there to remember and another program to monitor.
I agree with Munch on this one. I’ve been on ebay since 2000 and I manually snipe. I don’t want to register on another website and letting it have access to my ebay account. I don’t want to install a program on my PC to do it either. Just too damn lazy to look into either option. It’s frickin irrational I tell ya.
Yes, it means I miss out on the auctions that end at 2:45am. I don’t buy enough things on ebay to care.
I think everyone has pretty much conceded that if you bid rarely and/or only on low value items than you don’t need a sniping program or service.
I don’t know why you feel you need to keep repeating that point over and over and over again.
It simply isn’t in contention.
It’s great that you don’t feel the need for such a program but the point of the thread is to explain it’s purpose and where it can be useful, not to try and persuade you to use software or services against your will. :rolleyes:
A few things: This thread isn’t just about sniping programs, it’s about sniping in general. A few posters have been unable to make that distinction, so I wanted to make it clear to the general “I don’t know what sniping is” population. So when I made an argument in favor of Day 1 bidding (because I’m not going to wake up at 3:30am to snipe, nor am I going to use a program), the argument was “but sniping saves time!” - when in fact it does not save time in my situation.
Sniping programs are GREAT. One even restored movement in my left leg from that horrible thresher accident when I was 12. But there are (gasp!) actual situations where they’re not the perfect tool. Pointing those out is certainly allowed in this thread, no?
Yes, for many of us that are rigidly black & white, it seems quite obvious what the ebay math game actually is. A maximum is a maximum is a maximum. Submit that damn amount whatever it is.