P3D Re: eBay bidding (with 3D tie-in)

[jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Gabriel Jacob)]

>Everybody can bid during the week, everybody has equal chance
>to bid at the end.  Seems pretty level to me.

No it's not level, then again a Realist is not level! ;-)

>One can say "well, I'm not available to be online at the end
>of the auction" and that's true, but one might not be able to
>attend a live auction either where somebody is able to -- so
>do live auctions have an equally unlevel field too?

Nope, live auctions don't have an equally unlevel field. This
is because the difference is, if both are in attendance at the
end of a live auction, you always have a chance to outbid the
highest bidder. As you very well know this is NOT the case
with ebay sniping. Sure you can bid you highest bid early
on but if there is a higher bid and you have a change of heart,
your not given an opportunity to bid higher with ebay. You do
with a live auction.

>>Mike you mentioned you snipe sometimes (or often?). Why,
>> if it is not a good strategy? :-)

>I didn't say it wasn't effective,

IF you then are saying sniping IS effective, how can you advise 
people to place their maximum bid anytime!  

>In the end, the one who bid highest wins -- no matter how that
>highest was deterimined.  If someone bid less than they REALLY
>were willing to bid, then they have to live with the results
>of their own actions.  They could have bid more, but didn't. I've
>bid on many near the end, but the prior long-time bidder had a bid
>higher that I was willing to go.  This probably is the most common
>situation. 

The pattern that I have seen shows otherwise and in the long term,
the winning strategy is to bid your max. late. The thing you seem
to miss in all this is that people will not place there max. bids
anytime. Therefore the strategy has to reflect this. Otherwise
you'll tend to either pay more for the item or loose the bid.

>I thought the price was quite good too (and were won with far advanced 
>high bidding which had large margins at the auction end).  :-)

Good for you, but in the long term I wouldn't chance it. I've won
bids like that but those are rare. 

Anyways, I think we're going around in circles here and boring 
every. So if anyone has any questions, or comments please take
them offlist and I'll be happy to oblige. See yea on ebay everyone! :-)

And remember, bid your max. bids early so I can win! ;-)

Gabriel


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