Can someone explain why sniping is a good strategy on eBay?
If you don’t know what sniping is, it is where you waituntil the last second to bid on an item hoping to win it and leaving no time for someone to outbid you.
Why not just put in your max price and relax?
I think you basically answered this. “waituntil [sic] the last second to bid on an item hoping to win it and leaving no time for someone to outbid you.”
This is a practice we used at a silent auction, which worked to a degree. Hopefully, there is no other sniper nearby. My wife had me stand next to a christening dress and outbid anyone that outbid our last best bid. I also wanted a CIA sweatshirt, but another “sniper” was there too. Being F2F, it would’ve been her and me writing in higher and higher amounts until an auction worker came and closed the room. As it was, I just made her go to $50, then quit.
You don’t want to bid your max price, because there’s undoubtably someone richer out there that wants the item too. You also want to pay as little as possible.
Most people don’t have the time or inclination to sit and watch the bidding.
You can sometimes get it for cheaper by sniping. With sniping, your giving the person who is bidding on the same item as you little time to react to your bid. Granted, at the end of the day, if your max bid is higher than his, you’ll get it, but you might wind up not spending as much. Some people don’t bid a max amount–they incrementally bid and re-bid, Just to stay in the lead.
People snipe because they can attempt to outbid a guy by a few cents and possibly get the item.
Example: A guy who puts in his maximum bid at $15.00 will probably not balk at paying 15.01 or even 16.00, if necessary. He put in 15 because it was a round number and he wasn’t willing to go as high as, say, 20. If the current high bid is his 15 and it stands at (due to the way e-bay increments bids) 12.00, then a sniper could put in a bid of 15.01 and outbid him. He does it at the last minute because he knows that the guy who bid the 15.00 would surely try to up it, given the chance.
Well, I just like to keep the price low. I find that by bidding on it towards the end of the auction, I’m able to accomplish the aforesaid most of the time. Otherwise, it’s just a haggle war between the few people who really want that item.
It also helps prevent ‘stalking’, where a group of collectors of similar items is known to a bidder, and that bidder checks up on what the others are bidding on just to see if they have found an item that the bidder hasn’t.
I guess I understand.
I read an article where the guy was annoyed he was sniped. From my vantage point, however, if I put in my true max reservation price then sniping should not bother me, because the only way I will lose is if someone wins by paying more then I was willing.
And on a related note, I can’t rmeember if this is true, but didn’t someone find that items on eBay generally went for more then market prices? I am sure some times people get deals, but also often people get caught up in the ‘action’ and pay too much. I have bought a few items and sold a few on eBay. At least for the stuff I sold I have consistently been pleasantly surprised at the premium I percieved I got.
Yes, I’d definitely have to say that items go for far more than market value. I sold an old computer on there just the other week for easily double what it would have run had someone just bought the component parts and slapped the thing together. Did I mention this thing didn’t even have a hard drive? So it basically WAS just a bunch of slapped together parts and some driver disks. Meanwhile. I had a guy living here in San Diego who was bidding on it who I said could pick the thing up at my house if he won, and so he bid the price up even further to ensure he got it since he wouldn’t have to pay the $40 shipping/ insurance for the system (which he ultimately paid through raising the price anyway in my opinion, and saved me the trip to the post office.
I still agree with Tretiak - I just don’t see the point of sniping. It’s also not at all clear to me that it keeps the ultimate sale price lower than it otherwise would be. If somebody has set a proxy bid for $30, you’ll have to beat it to win, sniping or not.
If somebody snipes, but your proxy bid is still higher that their sniping bid, you’ll still win, even if they get it in at the last millisecond.
All that results in is a frustrated sniper - the proxy bidding system will “out-snipe” them every time.
My method is simple: pick the absolute, won’t-go-a-penny-more max price, and set my proxy bid at that level. Sit back and relax. If somebody bids more than that, so be it - I’m out. I think you have to do this when dealing in auctions, or you’ll quickly bid yourself through the roof.
Yesbut. Sniping does a few more things. Let us assume that we are not all filthy rich, and that we are not all snipers, and not all immoral. I want, say a colectable item, say a brit ed Terry Pratchett book. I go to eBay, and LO!, there are 2 of them listed, a few hours apart. I am not so anal, as to want to check the results every few minutes. If I bid on “A”, I will be expected to pay for it. So, if I bid, I have to be able to come up with the $$. So i bid on A, and get sniped. But now I can’t bid on B, as I don’t want to bid on both, as I might win BOTH, and, again, I do not have the time to follow the auctions every hour. So A gets sniped, and B ends up with no bids. Losers: both sellers, and me. Winner- one buyer.
And as far as that “put your maximum bid and wait”, well, where is the fun in that? It’s supposed to be an AUCTION, ie , I bid, you bid, I counter bid. ebay says that they can’t stop sniping, as it would not be like a real auction, but real auctions continue indefinately as long as there is bidding. The other thing is, getting a counter bid allows you to reconsider your bid, and perhaps up it. Usually I would have, by a buck or 2.
Yahoo auctions has something that will prevent this. I tried to snipe on a 1956 Roberto Clemente baseball card, and it seems that when you bid, the “time left in auction” clock shoots up to 10 minutes, even if you bid with one second left.
I’ve sniped, and been sniped out. No biggie. If you wait until there are literally only minutes left, you always run the risk that they might have server problems and you won’t be able to connect. Then you’re out of luck. It’s happened in my favor more than once.
With some of the items that I collect, it is unwise to let anyone else know I am interested until the last minute. I know who the other collectors are, and I do look them up and see what they are bidding on.
I particularly like auctions that end in the middle of the night and I’ve set my alarm to get up and protect my bid. There is nothing more annoying than being outbid by 50 cents while you are sleeping.
I have a pretty strict “last day” policy. It’s somewhat of a waste of time and energy to bid before the last day, especially with a 7- or 10-day auction. Bidding early only drives the price up. If you bid early, you worry, you keep checking back. Why bother? Of course, sometimes I will forget to keep checking and I will miss the last day of the auction. It’s all part of the game.
I got into a sniping war a week or so ago on eBay.
I was looking to get a DVD drive for my PC, and some guy was selling about eighteen of them at once, with one or two different auctions ending a day. (Why he didn’t do a dutch auction is beyond me.)
I had placed a bid earlier in the day on one for $55, and that held until about a half-hour until the auction ended, when it went up to $60. I placed another bid for $65 (the absolute max I was willing to pay was $80, btw), and that held as the high bid up until the end of the auction.
But, with less twenty seconds to go, the fellow sniper and I both decided to up our bids. I knew he was going to go for $70, so I put in a higher bid of $71. Silly me, though, since while my $71 outbid my earlier $65, he actually came in after me for $75 and won it. So, I lost.
Anyway, the next night I won another auction for an identical drive with slightly less sniping for $65. So, go figure.
Personally, I don’t see a problem with sniping. I read the article that Tretiak mentioned (I think it’s a ZDNet) and the guy was just a sore loser. Either place a safe proxy bid and wait it out, or sit at your PC and refresh the page every twenty seconds until the auction ends.
As far as over-paying in the heat of the auction, I’ve seen that happen before, too, but I don’t fall for it. I haven’t seen a DVD drive (w/ or w/o decoder cards – I didn’t need one in my case) for sale, retail, for less than $120, so anything I would’ve paid was a bargain.
People who respond to the sniping problem by saying something to the effect of “just put your maximum proxy bid and just wait it out” are assuming that I know what I should pay as a maximum for any item. Sure I could do the research, but most of the crap on eBay is impulse buy junk that I say “Yeah, I want it, but let me see how high the bidding is a half hour before the auction ends to see if anyone else wants it”
I’ve tried auctions at other sites too, and I swear they are all the same. It seems like no one gives a shit about an item until someone else decides they want it, and then complete mayhem breaks out. I collect knives on and off myself, and inevitably, on Bladeauction.com, no one touches an item until I bid on the damn thing, and then, even if days and days are left, three other people will submit bids too because somehow me bidding on it makes the item desireable. Well, I’m certainly glad random people in cyberspace who have never met me have great faith in my ability to value cutlery, but when I encounter this, and end up in a snipe-fight at the end ANYWAY, bidding early only seems to raise the ultimate price the winner will pay regardless, so I ONLY snipe now at auctions.
Mouth: I didn’t know that about Yahoo. Pretty clever.
As for the OP, here’s why I snipe:
The idea behind sniping is to trump these two types with a fast last-minute clincher that they can’t respond to in time.
Here’s another strategy I’ll use that more complex than sniping alone:
Sometimes, if an item I want has no bids I’ll enter the first (minimum amount) bid to “flush out” other interested parties; not everyone has the time or inclination to snipe or get into a bidding duel, so you want those types to declare themselves early on and, hopefully, go away thinking they scared you off. I DO NOT OUTBID THEM AT THIS POINT. I want them to think I’m no longer interested in the item at their new price. Hopefully they will feel that because they’re the top bidder they can sleep through the bidding deadline. I will not; I will snipe them in the last two minutes with my tippy-tippy-top bid!
The only real danger is BIG spenders and other snipers.
Forbes had a somewhat entertaining article about this a few months back, and I’d dig it up for the specifics, but it’s buried somewhere in my bedroom if I even have it at all anymore. Anyway, they detailed such things as people spending $3000 on a first edition of Huckleberry Fin in decent condition when antique book sellers had it in a better condition for about $1500, people spending some $25-$100 more for computer parts than the “store” value and even an amusing bit about a guy who bought a $400 camcorder, decided he didn’t like it and bought a nicer one then sold the original for about $475 – a week after he bought it.
In other words, it pays to shop “traditional” sources and not rely on eBay for deals anymore because too many people are on there now assuming they’re getting a great deal and jacking up the prices.
Jophiel,
I think it completely depends on what you are buying. In some cases, yes you will pay more for things than you would in a store. However, the things I mostly buy on ebay (videogames, used clothes, baseball cards, used/hard to find/out of print CDs) I without a doubt get much better deals than I would going the retail route.
Yeah, I don’t get this one…
German boardgame “Settlers of Catan” was bid higher than the price you could find at almost any game store. It’s a popular game that’s readily available. You even avoid the eBay Seller’s tacked-on shipping charges.
Used copy of “The Russian Campain” boardgame bid to $19 on eBay (not including shipping). The game is out of print, but can be found by a simple search on the internet. Amazon has this item going for $9.99 new!
I’ve got to figure that people are either lazy and aren’t willing to do some internet searches or phone calling… or else are caught up in the frenzy of bidding.
I see MANY examples of inflated prices for used items that can be easily found in new, pristine condition.
Tretiak asked,
didn’t someone find that items on eBay generally went for more then market prices?
I don’t know about generally, but it does happen.
I haven’t gotten into ebay yet, but I have a friend who does it a lot. She has been looking at some tandem bikes for her son, and kept seeing one brand that wasn’t familiar from her searches at high end bike shops. It was starting at $59, and being bid up to $100. On a hunch, she checked ToysRUs. Sure enough, they sell it; retail price is $59.99.
Obviously, the moral is to research before you buy. I’m guessing that a lot of people will see something that looks interesting and just go for it without knowing the actual value.
I’ve been buying & selling on Ebay for over a year now. My main target is ELO memorabilia. Unfortunately, there are 2 or 3 other apparently hardcore with more money than me that I have to battle on a regular basis. I have learned to wait until the last day (and sometimes last minute) to bid on something cool and/or unusual. I won’t go overboard, but, as stated above, nothing sucks more than being outbid by less than a buck because the auction ended at 3am and you weren’t there to take your last shot. Most things I have been after have almost always reappeared at a later date, so I can usually get what I’m after.