Re: [photo-3d] eBay bidding

[Mike Kersenbrock <michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ron Beck wrote:
> 
> It seems to me from all the discussions so far, sniping provides you
> with two "features" or advantages.  First, it keeps the initial bidding
> down on an item until the last few minutes of an auction.  Second, you
> can keep changing your bid to make it the highest and hope your
> "competition" isn't paying attention to the bidding at the close of an
> auction.
> 
> I believe that sniping works simply because the buyers get "auction
> fever" and tend to go above what they set their original "limit" at.  I
> don't snipe for that very reason.  I know that I'll get into a bidding
> war for an item.  It's happened when I've bid on items that someone has
> bid their limit.  I bid $10.00 on a VM projector and was instantly
> outbid.  So, I changed my bid to $15.00 and, again, was instantly out
> bid.  So, I changed my bid to $20.00 and became the high bidder (for a
> time).  However, I didn't monitor the auction right up until close and
> my projector went to someone else for $25.00.  Well, for a toy VM (mono)
> projector, I didn't want to pay over $20.00.  I really didn't want to
> pay over $10.00 but my "auction fever" took over.

That's exactly why you should have sniped.  If you had bid $20 with
five seconds to go in the auction, you may very well have won it.  Or if
you *really* wanted to pay no more than $10, then had you bid $10 with
five seconds left you'd have lost (seeing as how the existing bid was 
more than that), but you'd not have been tempted to go to $20 because
the auction would have been over before you found out that $10 was too
little.  That's why sniping (meaning less than 15 seconds, preferably
less than 10 seconds from the end) is effective both from a bidding
strategy but also for keeping one's self out of auction-fever! You
prevent others from reactionary counter bidding you (other than ebay's
auto-snipe for the leader) as well as preventing yourself from reactionary
counter-bidding as well!

Mike K.