Either that or he's cracking it beyond reasonable limits...

-Kurt

I have not used ebay for a while, not much at all since the change to numbered bidders, it appears the software has been modified to close that door. Only way now to track the bidders at least until the auction transitions to numbered bidders is to make notes of the bidding history manually prior to the "cloak", depending on the item this can give you some useful information regarding shill bidders. With awareness, this will be useless too.

Having reviewed the ebay message boards a bit, it looks like it is really disliked, but I would not expect it to change. By sniping, you can do your best to keep the shills guessing, and prevent runaway fake bids. It will transition to a snipe and or a Buy-it-now venue. Unless they change it to where the auction continues until there is no one left standing, other auction sites have this feature that functions for example: a bid placed in the last 120 seconds triggers and extension of the auction allowing a response for the next 2 munutes, then only with no activity for 2 minutes does the auction end. I have seen auctions escalate over $1000. this way. I am not interested in that either.

Time will tell if this is a useful change

I snipe because most the items I'm bidding on end while doing something else. I never enter my maximum bid into Ebay. All that does is allow a ghost/shill whatever bidder to run your bid up.

That being said, I enter my maximum bid into www.eSnipe.com . I've won every auction I've entered a snipe for except for the ones where I've actualy been out bid. Thats OK. once I set my budget/max bid thats it for me.

You know, I just stumbled onto that a couple of days ago, but now I can't remember how I got there!

Must be old age.

East Hill

OK, good point, for some items. I like to flip low cost bikes. Selling them on ebay makes no sense because by the time you add shipping and packing the price has increased 50 to 100%. And I don't have to deal with ratings by some idiot who is mad because it took over 4 days to recieve an item. For what I sell, the headaches of dealing with ebay are just not worth it. BUT, I would have a different point of view if I had a rare bike or a small item that would bring more money with an international audience. I see where you are headed Sierra and for some items, yes it makes sense. I'm just not in that market.
BTW, that national listing of craigslist stuff is real interesting.

I can see where this would be useful for the sellers and probably bring them higher prices for their items(and this after all is where ebay makes their money).

As a buyer, I think I would be put off by it. I spend quite a bit on ebay, and much of it is stuff that I don't really need at the moment. I figure if I can get the stuff at a good price, I'll pick it up and put into inventory for future use. If I have to start paying top dollar for everything, I will probably cut back dramatically on my ebay buying. I will only bid on those things that I absolutely have to have. I will also start checking out other sources for parts. I already see cases of items selling on ebay for more than you can buy them brand new for from vendors. It would probably be a good thing for me to back away from ebay anyway. I spend way too much money there. :(

By contrast, I bought a Kawasaki KLR 650 for the Reserve price (at least $700 less than the going price) by bidding three days before auction end, then adding a second bid to "reinforce" the bid, which usually dissaudes people since they think you really care. Last-minute bidders seem to think it's the only way to win an auction and that they "save" money - it isn't and they don't.

If there's something I'm interested in, I look at the bidding history of some of the other competing bidders. If they usually win by last-minute bidding, sometimes I put in some bids with a few minutes less just so they'll have to pay more.

That assumes they'll up their bids based on what you put in. I decide the max I'll pay and enter that as the snipe early on in the auction. If I win it, fine. If I don't, time to move on and look for the next offering. I'm not paying any attention at all to who else is bidding or how close it is to my bid. I bid once; that's it.

I also don't understand some of the comments on this thread that sniping within the last five seconds is somehow unfair. It's an auction. The person who bids the most wins, whether that comes in with 5 days to go or 5 seconds to go. If you don't like that setup, just go for BIN items.

Neal

Love your new avitar. :D

Courtesy of wethepeople! I'm not certain that Expat/That Forum Guy/Brian will let it slide, but Tama is one cool cat with or without!

East Hill

I tried Jbid, as recommended by onetwentyeight this weekend, and I'm a convert. I was a away for the weekend, and there were a lot of items I wanted to bid on (I make a chunk of my living eBay bike dealing), so I set up 12 snipes, and came home to find that I'd won two bikes (see the Catch of the Day thread). Pretty sweet deal!

O.K. did a bit of research, I bid for the first time in a while just now, lost but in looking at the bid history if one looks at bidding details, you can see what the cloaked bidders have bid on, and when, if they won that auction uncloaks them. Also, might show what they are currently bidding on. Diabolical, so the information is out there, just takes more clicks to unearth, so snipe and don't oficialy watch or set up an alternate account, I know several folk who have more than one, one for buying, one for selling, now one for watching.

As I said, ebay will evolve to a snipe or buy it now zone.

I just sniped this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=220086056557
It's an excuse to buy a Dremel, but I couldn't resist the pantographing.

Now if someone would just by my Moser, I could justify it to my wife.