Originally Posted by
southpawboston
All true, but there is one good reason for placing a low-ball bid early, and that's to help ensure (but not guarantee) that the seller doesn't end the auction early, before anyone else has bid. It's easy for a seller to end an auction prematurely before any bids are placed, but it can count against the seller if someone has already placed a bid and the seller backs out.
If there's something I really want, I always bid a token amount early, like a buck or two above the minimum, then set my proxy bidding software to snipe at the end with the amount I'm actually willing to pay.
If someone else has already bid, then there's no need to do this, just come in with your snipe at the end.
That is a good point. However, I have rarely seen incidents where the auction is ended by the seller. Sure it happens, but it is rarely.
I do the manual snipe.. I need to check into that that sniping software. On my home computer I can cue in at 1 1/2 seconds maybe even at the 1 second mark. At work, when Ebay was allowed, I lost because at the 3 second mark, my connection wasn't fast enough.