Originally Posted by
wrk101
"You are never able to win an auction" = you are not bidding high enough.
Also possibly you are not bidding at the right time. Do you know about sniping? I have found that sniping has been very helpful in winning eBay auctions, often even at good prices.
In case you don't, sniping is showing up in the last seconds of the auction and putting in your bid. If you put your bid in a day before it ends, it is easy for somebody else to overbid you by a few dollars, due to the strategic error of you revealing your information (bid amount) without knowing anything about your opponent.
Set yourself a reminder for when an interesting auction closes, and decide on a maximum amount you would be willing to pay -- this is important now, BEFORE you load up the auction and check the current bid. If you don't you risk getting caught up in desperate auctioning and end up paying too much. Ask yourself questions like "if I bid X and end up getting out-bid, will I regret not bidding higher?" Choose X so that (a) if you end up winning the item for X, you can afford it and will not feel ripped-off, and (b) if you lose the item for more than X, you do not feel you have missed an opportunity.
After you have picked your max bid price X, then AND ONLY THEN load up the auction page (this should be like 1-5min before auction closes). The page will be live, the remaining time red and updating, and the current price will also be automatically updating. If it's already over X, kick back and watch the suckers pay more than the thing is worth (to you). If it's less, wait until about 10 sec, then bid X, and hope for the best. If your bid puts you over the top, most likely other bidders will not have a chance to respond.
When you make this a regular practice, (a) you will never pay more than what you calmly value an item to be worth, (b) you will sometimes pay X (perhaps there is another sniper working, or perhaps the actual bid of the auction-leader before you is by coincidence only X-1 -- for this reason, try to choose non-round numbers, like instead of $5.00, do $5.23 or instead of $1000, do $1007.89), or (c) you will often pay less than X (depending on how much larger X is than the auction-leader's actual bid)
Good luck!