Might be true but I think if the sellers are wise they will set the price high enough to recoup the bay and pay-pal fees etc.
I have also noticed that shipping fees are out of the roof on many items because of bays flat rate shipping service...anyway you just have to add it all up and see if it is worth the price after your are all in.
Ben

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...n/varden09.jpg
this came from Hoagy Carmichael.
I paid $255 in ebay auction and could sell it for $750 if I could let it go
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7.../cPC120035.jpg
A particularly nice pairing with a 1932 Thomas Special rod, since the Young Pattern 15a was also sold as the Thomas Special reel.
This pair has fished on tv - we were filming TU On the Rise when I took this snapshot

Might I suggest the Classic Fly Rod Forum?
This is the Bike Forum

why, if we can't suggest using Auctionsniper? (I used to be a moderator there)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...dac3f9a046.jpg
(can you name the bike? I can name the rod and reel)

I don't spend much time buying on eBay these days, but when I do, I use auction sniper and have done so since 2003.

Ha. Relative to your younger self?

I agree and that is usually what I do unless it's something I really, really want, then I go with one of the last second strategies. Still, it hurts when you miss out on something by $.50 or a dollar. Man, you snipers really stick in my craw!

BTW Kingston, wife is from Lake Bluff, just off Green Bay Rd, Lake Forest High grad. Her parents and bro still live there. Nice town.

Small world. I'll tell 'em you said hi. :thumb: If you're ever in town and want to borrow a bike just let me know. I know what it's like visiting the in-laws.

Once upon a time I saw a bicycle on eBay and I Wanted It. Bidding was in the $250-$400 range. I did not "watch" the sale, and I did not bid, but I saved screenshots of everything, went to esnipe.com and bade $2000, and then closed my eyes. When I panicked, and I did, I looked at my saved screenshots. Came a time I couldn't stand the suspense, and I looked at the auction, an hour before the end: bidding was up to $990 and change. I shuddered, but I did not look again. I won the bike at a bit over $1500, and wow. Had I shown my interest, the price could have been twice that. It's a lot of money but I got a deal.

Yeah the whole point of bidding at the last second or two (sniping), is that you may win the item at a lower price than if you'd simply bid your maximum on eBay itself and waited to see what happens. Bidding wars just drive up the price, which is great for the seller, not so great for the buyer. As a buyer I love Auctionsniper, as a seller I hate it, lol.

That's all the snipe is.

You put in the maximum amount that you want to pay, the snipe program bids for you in the last few seconds. There's no game of beating somebody and trying to outdo someone. You just put down your max, the sniping program puts down an amount of money up to your max. You can win or lose depending on how much you put as your max or the speed of your sniping program.

If you just bid, and someone else wants to beat you, they simply bid more than you- consciously bid more than you in an effort to bid more than you vs. the snipe that's not entered until the very end, with no time for someone to attempt to beat you.

So the premise of sniping is that the other bidders will increase their maximum bids over what their maximum bids would have been otherwise if they have time to find your maximum bid through a series of incrementally higher bids, when they could instantly determine your maximum bid by simply entering their maximum bid? This assumes that bidders who don't snipe are significantly less sophisticated bidders than those who snipe, which is probably true in some cases. I'm not so sure in the case of collectibles.

How do you know? Sounds like there was another sniper whose high bid was $1499 (or whatever), and you won the auction at $1500 with a high bid of $2000. Same outcome as if you both would have entered your high bid at the start of the auction.

I'm sure ebay has stats on the difference of final sales prices for both types of auctions. That would be interesting to see, as it's not obvious to me that sniping results in a systematically lower selling price.

I don't, of course! All I know is that I looked at what was for sale, and I evaluated the situation in my own mind, without considering what other bidders might be thinking; I hid my thinking from them. Had I placed a public bid, I would have made my thinking public, and I would have allowed his thinking to color mine. There's a lot to be said for that, and it might have been much to the sellers advantage, but I did not see the upside for me. By cutting off any unintentional communications with other bidders, I was able to stick to my initial assessment of the auction.
This is not the ideal situation for everyone, but there are times when it is to the buyer's advantage. And I'm okay with that.

This is the part I don't understand. How is entering your high bid in eBay making your bid public?Nobody else can see your high bid, and you can't see anyone else's high bid.

Are you saying that the sniping programs allow you to impose a level of self-control that wouldn't be possible if you found out that your high bid was too low before the end of the auction?

I guess that's as good a reason as any to snipe. As you say, there isn't really any downside.

Little by little. Say, I decide $2000 is my max, and I bid that. You only see my current high bid at, say, $300, so you bid $325 and instantly my high bid is $350. You go to $450 and instantly I've bid $475. Maybe you're intimidated, but more likely I've just got your back up by now, which is not my intention at all! I'm not interested in a pissing match, I'm just trying to buy a bike. Anyway, I've seen it many times: the "you" guy, little by little, ups his bid until he wins, not because he wants to spend that much, but because he doesn't want the other guy (=me) to win. So he wins the bike at $2100 and I don't. Fine! But I'd prefer to win it myself for far less.

Yo! I said there's no down side for me. The situation for the seller is more complicated, can be argued either way.

All in all I think sniping is all to the good, but I recognise that the thang can be argued from either side.

Then there's my luddite version of sniping, where I just wait till the auction is a couple of minutes from closing and bid my max. I guess I'm showing my hand, but not for very long. Fellow luddites have limited time to incrementally outbid me, and the techno-snipes with a higher max would have beat my snipe anyway if their max is higher. Or something.

Maybe I just don't want it badly enough. Vince Lombardi would have me flogged.

Good advice given above, but it's just stuff. If you want it, and so does someone else, may the strongest bidder win; that's all folks!

it's really simple - if you bid minutes before the auction ends, everybody watching has the option to bid you up as many times as they want.
If you bid in the last 3 seconds, they don't have time to bid you up and are stuck with their last bid.
If you set your snipe days before, no one but you knows what you're going to bid, and you don't even watch what is going on - in fact, you shouldn't.
You will find out if you won or lost. If you won great, and if you lost you honestly didn't want to pay that much anyway.

^I agree with this and feel the same way.

You may be correct, now.

It's been a long time since I've sold anything and they have been doing A LOT of policy changes. As a buyer, I am thankful. You've only got to get burned by a junk seller once to swear off eBay for good, and that kills the whole system.

I got burned with a junk seller, invoked all the necessary steps, and the seller no longer is on eBay, But I, the customer am.
So, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I retract my assertion.

15 seconds will give you a better cushion.

I type my max bid in the box, wait until the timer hits 15 seconds left to go, submit and confirm. There's usually 5 seconds of high suspense until the auction ends.

this is it. all the sniping programs etc.. just bid what you are willing to pay and don't fret if it goes higher.

Like A few others I buy mostly "buy it now" items.
Also Ebay has promos in the past about every other month it seems for $10 off if you spend $75 or more but it does not work on everything.

And it seems when I find A bicycle or frame I really want to bid on.There is one other bidder going against me,and I
just will not go above A certain price.

Are all you people who are using snipe programs also installing electronic shifting? I like to do my own sniping. It's more satisfying.

No.