last-minute ebay bidders

[KellyHabersham]

*I know this happens, and it's part of using e-bay, but it was just a bit annoying*

To make it short, my dad's father served in the army during WW II, and I had been looking for original period items on ebay to kind of remember him by. (he rarely talked about his experiences)

Anyhow, I had found an army backpack which was within my price range, I was the winning bidder, and within the last minute or two of the auction, someone else came in and outbid me by like 50 cents. And I guess what makes this frustrating for me is that because it was last-minute, I never got an e-mail from ebay saying I was no longer the winning bidder, and I had been checking in a few times today.

[HYHYBT]

Sadly, you pretty much have to either bid significantly higher than anyone else is likely to or play the same game yourself.

[KellyHabersham]

True.....and I don't mean to sound like I'm a sore loser or anything, it's the fact that I was trying to avoid this happening.....with the checking in to see if I'd been outbid.


(on a different note, I found an original edition of Mein Kampf for sale, and the seller is in Germany)

[wolfie]

That's why FleaBay includes an automatic proxy - instead of bidding just above the leading bid, it's best to put in a bid of the highest you're willing to pay. Their system will bid by increments until either you or the previous leader hit your limit.

Example:

Item shows $10 maximum bid. It's something you really want, and bid $50. Turns out the leading bidder had put in a $20 bid. The system automatically raises by $1 until one of you (in this case the previous leading bidder) drops out. Item now shows $21, and you're the leading bidder.

"Sniper" comes along seconds before the auction closes (I believe there's software available to automate "last minute" bidding) and bids $40. The automatic raising happens, item gets bid up to $41, and "sniper" drops out. Because they waited until the last few seconds, they don't have the opportunity to react to their bid losing and enter another, so you get the item for $41.

If you had bid the "increments" manually, this would have happened:

You bid $11. Previous bidder's "proxy" (don't need to do anything special - it's automatic when you enter a bid) sees they've been outbid but item is still under their limit, and bids $12. You see that you've been outbid and bid $13. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you bid $21, previous bidder's "proxy" drops out (over their $20 limit), and you're the leading bidder. "Sniper" comes along, enters their $40 bid, and gets the item for $21 (since you were already at your $21 limit, even though you were prepared to go as high as $50).

Alternatively, if it's something you really want, and there's a "buy it now" option, use that.

[crashhelmet]

They call that "Sniping." There are apps out there that will either do that for a buyer or alert them when the auction is ending so that they can make a final bid.

Then there are the sellers that bid on their own shit with a separate account when they're not getting the price they want.