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

[michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Kersenbrock)]

> 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. 

Not true, IMO.  You bid your highest bid at or near the end of the
auction and let YOUR ebay proxy handle the timing issues
with snipers.  

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

I just said that if everybody did that, sniping would be ineffective.
I still think this is true.

> 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.

Quite true, you make my case.  *IF* they did make their max bids,
the advantage of sniping would subside if not completely go away.

Note that very late bidding and sniping appear similar but are
intended differently.  I often will use ebay's "going going gone"
feature to see what auctions are ending NOW -- and I'll see auctions
that I've never seen before and make "sniper-like" bids, but it's
not like I waited for the end.  They've 750,000 items per week I
don't check them all out all the time.  Not ever even close, actually.  :-)


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

No problem... but you'll STILL have to bid higher than I'm
willing to pay in order to win something I'm bidding for.  No
matter when I do the bidding, or when you do.

Mike K.



> 
> Gabriel
> 
> 


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