Just curious: why is it that anyone would bid at any point before the last day (or hour, or 10 minutes) of an ebay auction?

I suppose this applies to anything, but I see it often on vintage bikes and parts where an item is just listed and people bid it way up in the first day. We all know that the item is only won in the last minute or so right?

It boils down to commn sense. It is amazing how many people don't have it.

IMO, bidding early runs the price up, and alerts others that you are interested in the item. I wait until the last 2 or 1 1/2 second. Then I shoot in my max

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.

I've found that most folks who complain about other bidders are people who don't understand eBay and/or have less money. They tend to be people who lose in auctions. There are different strategies, and I'm convinced none of them matter that much.

Bidding early can scare people off. An auction in day six with an abnormally low number might scare a seller and he may cancel the auction, or take a local sale, or take a messaged bid. I like bidding a low number early to let people know I'm there...it also might create false security in others and they may bid low. Then i have a real bid later...depending on how much i want the item. Sometimes I just bid what I'm willing to pay early and walk away. If I get it, OK...if not, life goes on. It depends on how badly I want the item. If I really want something, and don't want to face the risk of losing it, a high bid early might chase people off and help to ensure my victory. It might not. The psychology to this can be analyzed endlessly.

The bottom line is that people are going to bid what they want and when they bid probably matters a lot less than people think. If you value it more than others, you win. If not, you'll lose.

I rarely do auction listings any more; I put an item up with a BIN price...an ambitious one...and I take offers. I want to have some control over my sale price. I have less control with auction sales (and eBay charges higher fees on auction sales). A lot of the time I get an off site offer

The reverse thought process works too. How many times have you considered an object but first observed that someone else had already expressed interest? First, understand (as I'm sure you do) that your bid is really just an "instruction" to a proxy bidder of what your highest bid should be in the event someone else bids higher than the displayed price. In essence the idea is to scare off competitors.

If you bid low and then bump your own bid two or three times it raises the bid count but not the displayed price. If you place those bids before anyone notices that first price then someone else might think that several people are interested. Even if someone notices that the bid count went up but the price didn't then that person would still conclude that at least one person has serious interest.

Yet another thought process takes place. If you (or anyone) bid on an object and your bid is immediately trumped, it means someone else has already placed a higher bid. If you try several times and this keeps happening then you may give up, seeing as how the only way to win that object will be to probe the current maximum.

The alternative, an ongoing bidding war, is the wrong approach. It tells any competitor that you were willing to pay X, but no, maybe X + A, but then if necessary X + B, or whatever. It pegs your interest and budget (or lack of dedication) in a particular range, and tells competitors that you are hesitant about going higher, even though you may end up going higher anyway. The only way to win such a war is to sneak in the last bid, but you aren't going to beat the automated website bidding programs except by the luck of last-millisecond entries.

So a savvy bidder who really wants something will start with his/her highest bid early rather than engage in a bidding war toward the end. If you really want something then go in with a sense of purpose at the highest price you are willing to pay. If you aren't that interested then you probably won't win anyway.

Lots of overthinking in this thread. Sniping is only strategy that makes any sense. Anything else just costs you more money.

Sniping can also be a strategy for people who don't intend to win. It all depends on the item and how much I want it.

That's a good point. Over the last several months / year, it seems like I've seen an increasing number of auctions in my watch list getting ended early.

I didn't mean to sound like I was complaining, just curious. I've observed this "I want this auction so I must be the high bidder now!" mentality on ebay for many years. As a buyer, I think it's just kind of goofy, but as a seller I like it when that happens on my auctions

When I've sold on ebay, I usually just start my auctions at $9.99 or so and let them go since I'm not always sure what the final value will be (and often I have been very happily surprised). Do you mean an auction with BIN or a fixed-price long-term item? The latter has seemed appealing, but I thought ebay charged a higher percentage for the fixed-price ones with make an offer vs auction formats (even with BIN).

I'm glad I asked this question because it's bringing up some interesting points in ebay psychology. I can see your point, because usually when I see several bids on a particular auction (but usually with price increases) in the first day or two, I can assume that there is a lot of interest and it will sell for much more. To me, it generally seems that you can get better deals on items with no bids until the last day or so, and bidding early to actually increase the price only serves the seller's best interest. However, if it's something I want, I wouldn't be scared off by the amount of bids, but mainly by the auction price within the last day (or earlier if it's gone above what I'm willing to pay).

Yes, but that is simply because a more desirable item will generate more interest, so someone is more likely to be willing to pay more.

Sometimes there are more and sometimes there are fewer people interested. If there are few people interested you may win an auction with a low price. If there are a few "maybe" people hoping to win something cheap then an early bid may reduce their numbers.

Remember, the price you pay is never what you are willing to pay. It is one increment more than the second-highest amount someone else is willing to pay. The fewer people there are in that "also bid" category, the lower that second-highest bid is likely to be. But if someone else really wants that item you're going to have to be willing to pay more than that person is to win it yourself.

My ebay items tend to sell for around of what they are worth. It doesn't matter if the bids come early or late. Unless the item is really rare, most folks have a good gauge on what something is worth via completed listings and don't overpay because the exact same item will pop up shortly or is already listed.

The rare outliers are the bidding war and the lowball bid winners.

Can you point to ANY study, analysis, etc. that proves this? I see this over and over again but it is always anecdotal. I make a living building what are basically automated bidding systems for financial markets. I work with people who have PhDs in Game Theory, the study of how people play games (which is what an auction is) and how they behave under different circumstances. There is simply no best strategy. It depends on supply/demand for the item, the utility or objective function of the bidders, the rules of the auction, etc. I understand your reasoning and what you think the psychology is behind the auction but in the end I am not convinced it makes much difference and have never seen proof that it does. Last minute sniping MAY avoid some bidding wars but in the end it just keeps YOU out of the bidding war. Since other people are free to bid however they please and since there are a variety of objective and utility functions at work all your last minute snipe does is control your behavior. An early, high bid may discourage a bidding war as much as encourage one. This is of course just my opinion since I also haven't done a study or seen a study, etc. Sometimes I snipe, sometimes I put in a token bid early to keep the seller from bailing, sometimes I put in my best bid and walk away, etc.

Only newbs bid early. All it does it let other potential bidders know that there will be competition on the item.

The other mistake I see bidders make is that they avoid the BIN, and start bidding instead. Invariably, the price ends up higher than the original BIN (BIN disappears on non-reserve auctions as soon as the first bid is placed).

There is a bicycle flipper I know who only monitors BIN auctions, and launches immediately if a seller puts a too low price on an item. He has gotten some incredible deals. If you see a $500 bike with a $100 BIN, why not BIN?

As far as data and game theory, speaking for my own auctions (over 1000 now), 99% only get a couple of bids max. I rarely see bidding wars. And ebay uses a somewhat unique model where auctions end at a predetermined time, rather than when people stop bidding.

As far as no recourse if you do not snipe high enough, absolutely. So on an item you have to have, and one that shows up rarely, then sniping is pretty risky.

And to perhaps refute what I just said:

https://www.usatoday.com/tech/science...-of-ebay_x.htm

A rather old article but it does mention a study of actual EBay auctions.

It doesn't make a big difference whether you bid early or late. The people interested in the item seriousely are going to bid regardless. Bidding early lets others know that someone does want that item, and oftentimes that's enough to discourage others from going after it. People like to feel like there is no competition, only to see that 20 other people had the same idea.

If there is an item you are willing to pay $20 for and others are willing to pay $19.50, you're going to pay that $20 regardless.

Snipers try to get in a steal, but it seldom works out on a quality item. There are so many sniping programs or active people that it is a mute point.

Things that sniping does do : It gets a rush of people eager to win, getting in quick bidding wars that often go past what the item is worth. They are active then and there and have seconds to react to final bids. If they lowball it, they can also miss out on an item that they might of been willing to pay for.

Bidding early flushes out a lot of people. It's pretty simple. Put in the max bid you feel comfortable with. People are going to bid it up on day one or in the last few minutes. It's still going to go to the same rough price. Overbidders are going to do so whether the bid is early or last minute.

On the other side, I do think that sniping has a higher chance of getting you an item cheaper. That is going on the idea that you are active enough when others have forgotten the auction and can outbid them before they realize the auction is now over.

I have successfully sniped a lot of items at really low prices. The key was I was not married to any single auction. So if my low bid did not work on one auction, no problem. I bought a new camera once, that was being sold by multiple sellers. So I searched completed auctions, and looked for the lowest price. My snipe was BELOW that lowest price. My snipe program lets me enter a group, first successful auction, and the subsequent bids are cancelled. I must have entered 20 or 30 different camera auctions. Took about a week, but I got one.

As a seller, I always get a kick out of newbs that will keep raising their bid every time someone else bids. They go up $1, then $4 or $5, etc. It is not uncommon to see such a newb bid 5 to 10 times, "maintaining" their lead... About half the time, a sniper will come in with six seconds left, and crush the newb.

Not really, if I decide something is worth a specific amount to me and bid that then it really doesn't matter when I bid it.

If I bid $50 for something the minute the auction lists then if nobody else is willing to pay more than $50 I'll get it. If someone else is willing to pay more then $50 I won't get it.

I've won auctions by sniping them, I've lost auctions when I tried to snipe but found the other guy's bid was higher than mine. I've also won auctions by bidding early and just letting it take its course, and lost auctions when I bid early and someone else was willing to pay more.

The only real advantage sniping can give is that if your bid is a good jump over the current bid then you can win as long as your bid is higher than the other guy's, even if only by a penny (and the lack of time denies him the chance to rebid). If you bid in increments you have to beat the other guy's bid by the minimum increment once you've flushed out his maximum. Frankly for the sake of some pocket change I can't be bothered with that level of analysis.

I bid early to cancel out BIN, to keep the seller from cancelling an auction, and sometimes if an item is common enough to scare off other potential bidders who will be inclined to look for the same item from another seller that has 0 bids.

In my experience I've often ended up paying less for items when I put in an early bid, compared to items I waited on till the last minute to bid on.

You don't seem to grasp the concept of sniping.

My snipe program allows me to specify a list of items and quantity needed and it will snipe through the list until it acquires that specified quantity.

For me, sniping allows me to utilize eBay as a "fire and forget" system. I set up the snipe with my maximum bid and don't bother checking it again until the auction is over.

Do you pay for that?

Most of the reasons I like sniping have been mentioned already. One that has not (unless I missed it) is the freedom to cancel snipes before the action ends. I've done this lots of times when I've found another item I like better, one pops up locally, or I find a forgotten part in my bin. I guess there's a process for canceling bids on Ebay but it's not something I'd want to do with any regularity.

The gist of the academic studies is that, as I said, it depends. It depends on whether the item has a well known "market value", i.e. is it a new item that participants can easily determine the normal price of or a very rare item. It depends on supply vs. demand. It depends on the other bidders, are they "rational" or "irrational"? The studies suggest that sniping is sometimes an optimal strategy and sometimes it isn't.

I have a bid out on something I really want and am willing to pay more then human amount for.
problem is it ends at 4AM and im not waiting for that, so I set my max at what im willing to pay for it ansnd let fate decide if its mine.

but manual sniping is fun!