New to ebay

[Paul McGaha]

I just made my first bid for an item on ebay.

I thought the asking price on the item was fair so I bid just a few dollars more.

I was watching the clock countdown the final minutes and apparently a couple of bids were made in the last few seconds.

I was $2.50 too low. Dang it.

An ebay education I guess.

PHM

[Glenn Vaughn]

Winning a bid on EBay can be a daunting task. I usually manage to get what I want but it is always a crap shoot. A good resource for tips is: http://couponing.about.com/od/online...ns/a/ebay2.htm

[Jay Rasmussen]

I bid the most I’m willing to pay, no more. The auto bid will take care of the rest. Trying to do the last second bidding is crazy to me. Make it easy on yourself.

[Paul McGaha]

Thank you Glenn I read the link.

If there is anything to be learned I think its maybe dont be too conservative with the bid (If you really want it) and dont bid until very late to give others less time to get over you.

[Gary Hodgin]

Paul,
You need to think about the maximum you're willing to bid and bid that amount. It's generally best to wait to the last few seconds since there's no advantage to you if others know your bidding. Sometimes you can't wait till the last few seconds since you can't always be at your computer (unless you have a software program that does it for you).

Be aware that ebay is what's known as a Vickrey auction (named after economist William Vickrey). The winner doesn't pay what he bids but rather pays the amount of the second highest bid plus the bid increment. The incentive of a Vickrey auction is for bidders to bid their maximum prices because the price you have to beat is unknown to you until the end of the auction.

[Tim Morton]

do people still bid on ebay? It seems like most auctions are "buy it now".

[Gary Hodgin]

do people still bid on ebay? It seems like most auctions are "buy it now".

I'm not a big ebay user, bought 23 items and sold 0 over several years, but I've noticed the same thing. It seems like the Buy It Now option shows up a lot more now than a couple of years ago. Seems like more reserve prices too.

[Bryan Morgan]

Sniping! Its the only way I can ever win anything if I'm trying to get something on auction. It seems kind of mean but it is what it is. I've sniped many things on eBay. If you time it right you can have your bid go through on the last few seconds and people usually aren't fast enough to outbid you. The part that sucks about that is if someone sets their limit higher than your final bid they will still win because it auto bids for them.

[Glenn Vaughn]

Some things I have learned about EBay bidding:

1. Bidding early establishes interest in the item - it may cause a sniper to give a higher maximum bid.

2. Bidding early with a max accomplishes the same thing as #1.

3. Bidding on an item with multiple bidders is prone to draw a sniper.

My technique has been to:
1. Establish what I want as a maximum bid. Open a second window with a bid preloaded with the maximum amount I want to bid.
2. Open the clock on the computer.
3. In the first window; refresh and see how much difference there is between the computer clock and EBay's clock. (The time remaining will allow you to see this).
4 Submit the bid in the second window when there are 1 or 2 seconds left.

This is not foolproof since there are automatic sniper programs out there (This is why I do not like to draw attention to interest in an item). It will usually get past a manual sniper since they do not have time to react.

The other point I would like to make is; Be positive about the value of what you are bidding on. I see many items that can be purchased at retail on-line that are going for much higher in bidding wars. Also many items are listed for more than retail - some people are convinced that just because it is an item in an auction it is a real bargain.

[Bill LaPointe]

I have used this "snipe" program for years. http://www.merlinsoftware.com/auctionmagic/ I never place a bid on an item until 10 seconds before the auction ends. The program does all the work. Buy as many as 10 items a week and get what I want about 60% of the time. Bought 3 items last week. I have no connection to the company or the product in any way.

[Paul McGaha]

I appreciate all the comments.

If I have to deal with automatic sniper software I dont see me winning anything. It's a guess but I suppose really good buys will probably get siniped at least manually.

I'm pretty much finished with tooling my shop (Never really finished though) and to date all my tools were bought new less a shaper and a drum sander that I bought from Creekers. I think I'll continue with that policy.

I'm also lucky enough to live near a pretty large city in Washington DC and our local craigslist is pretty substantial. I've never bought anything on craigslist but I dont think I'd mind as long as I was dealing with ok people. I've sold a couple of things on craigslist and it was ok. I've found you can pick up on the reseller types pretty quickly and to tell one of them no to their low ball offers is easy.

PHM

[del schisler]

I just made my first bid for an item on ebay.

I thought the asking price on the item was fair so I bid just a few dollars more.

I was watching the clock countdown the final minutes and apparently a couple of bids were made in the last few seconds.

I was $2.50 too low. Dang it.

An ebay education I guess.

PHM

their is a trick that you can use . Most don't know about it. What you do is open up 2 window's and slide one over so that you can see the other page. Like 1/2 over the 1/2 so that you can place a bid but don't sumitt it . Get your amount you want to bid ready . Now on the other page you keep refreashing the page so that you can see how much time is left at the last min you subtract 10 sec from the 1 min now you need to watch a clock for this. now when the clock run's out you submitt your bid. Wich give's you 10 sec. for the bid to get placed. That is probly how you got beat out of your item. You keep the page up so that you can click on the submitt button . work's every time unless some one wait's like 8 sec. and beat's you by 2 sec. a game

[David Weaver]

I'm not a big ebay user, bought 23 items and sold 0 over several years, but I've noticed the same thing. It seems like the Buy It Now option shows up a lot more now than a couple of years ago. Seems like more reserve prices too.

That's because they've reduced or eliminated a lot of the listing fees and increased selling fees instead. It doesn't cost you too much to list something for a stupid price and then not sell it.

I think that's a problem, but they're obviously going for max money.

If you start looking for hand tools, you'll find a few greedy sellers who list stuff for idiotic prices, use the word "rare" and "excpetional" and "amazing" and stupid stuff like that, and then put a BIN or Best Offer price of 2-3 times what any reasonable person would pay.

The best way to bid on ebay is still to bid on the items that are ending some obscure time and use a bid sniping service like esnipe so you don't have sit around and follow the auctions. The other benefit to services like esnipe is that if you bid on something, and then you later notice that you missed a detail and don't want to bid, you just take it out of the snipe queue since it's not actually entered on ebay, and it's no big deal.

Use the "saved search" function to get items you want and the completed listings to find out about what you should expect to pay. When you use a saved search, you can exclude the gobs of sellers who do only BIN listings at insulting prices, there's no use looking at their items.

My last search for backsaws was as follows:


(backsaw, "back saw", "tenon saw", "dovetail saw") -knife -machete -primos -primo's -olson -bayonet

From Sellers:-2lshark, - jtallen83, - blackswann, - 4run888

The logic is that:
* I can get a saw under the description of any of the above in the parentheses
* the quotes make sure that the two words appear together in a row with each selection of quotes.
* Words following with the minus sign exclude any listings that have those words in (just by rolling through listings, I found out that those things showed up and weren't related to the saws I wanted, like sawtooth bayonets or whatever), and:
* in the "from sellers" tab in the "advanced search" , listing the sellers with a minus sign allows me to exclude anything from those sellers, which also you find when you're looking for certain items, there are people who just list gobs of things looking for a sucker, and they're all too overpriced to even look at, just a waste of time to bother.

Once you save each search, you can just click on your saved searches without having to go through the details. It works really nicely.

And one more word about popular things - if you're looking for something that brings lots of money and is easy to ship (something like a dovetailed infill plane with an ebony infill or something), unless it's not properly listed, you're not going to find it cheap on ebay with any regularity. There are too many people bidding, and you'll end up wasting your time. Stuff that is a tiny bit off the beaten path will go cheap. For example, I wanted a large tenon saw, but I wanted something old with a tasteful handle. Looking up a wenzloff saw or a primo disston saw probably isn't going to yield anything cheap without major flaws, but I did get a spear and jackson 16" large tenon saw that was spotless, and was old enough to have split nuts and a hand done tote with a lamb's tongue for $16.

[Gary Hodgin]

That's because they've reduced or eliminated a lot of the listing fees and increased selling fees instead. It doesn't cost you too much to list something for a stupid price and then not sell it.

I think that's a problem, but they're obviously going for max money.

If you start looking for hand tools, you'll find a few greedy sellers who list stuff for idiotic prices, use the word "rare" and "excpetional" and "amazing" and stupid stuff like that, and then put a BIN or Best Offer price of 2-3 times what any reasonable person would pay.

The best way to bid on ebay is still to bid on the items that are ending some obscure time and use a bid sniping service like esnipe so you don't have sit around and follow the auctions. The other benefit to services like esnipe is that if you bid on something, and then you later notice that you missed a detail and don't want to bid, you just take it out of the snipe queue since it's not actually entered on ebay, and it's no big deal.

Use the "saved search" function to get items you want and the completed listings to find out about what you should expect to pay. When you use a saved search, you can exclude the gobs of sellers who do only BIN listings at insulting prices, there's no use looking at their items.

My last search for backsaws was as follows:


(backsaw, "back saw", "tenon saw", "dovetail saw") -knife -machete -primos -primo's -olson -bayonet

From Sellers:-2lshark, - jtallen83, - blackswann, - 4run888

The logic is that:
* I can get a saw under the description of any of the above in the parentheses
* the quotes make sure that the two words appear together in a row with each selection of quotes.
* Words following with the minus sign exclude any listings that have those words in (just by rolling through listings, I found out that those things showed up and weren't related to the saws I wanted, like sawtooth bayonets or whatever), and:
* in the "from sellers" tab in the "advanced search" , listing the sellers with a minus sign allows me to exclude anything from those sellers, which also you find when you're looking for certain items, there are people who just list gobs of things looking for a sucker, and they're all too overpriced to even look at, just a waste of time to bother.

Once you save each search, you can just click on your saved searches without having to go through the details. It works really nicely.

And one more word about popular things - if you're looking for something that brings lots of money and is easy to ship (something like a dovetailed infill plane with an ebony infill or something), unless it's not properly listed, you're not going to find it cheap on ebay with any regularity. There are too many people bidding, and you'll end up wasting your time. Stuff that is a tiny bit off the beaten path will go cheap. For example, I wanted a large tenon saw, but I wanted something old with a tasteful handle. Looking up a wenzloff saw or a primo disston saw probably isn't going to yield anything cheap without major flaws, but I did get a spear and jackson 16" large tenon saw that was spotless, and was old enough to have split nuts and a hand done tote with a lamb's tongue for $16.

David,
Thanks, that's useful information. I've never done the type of search you're describing, but will definitely try it. I have picked up a couple of Atkins panel saws and a P.B. Fraley tenon saw at decent prices. Of course, I like the Disstons and have a couple, but they tend to go a little higher and I'm looking for users.

It's funny you mention the large tenon saw (16" x-cut) because that's what I'm looking for now. I'm seriously thinking about a 16" x-cut from Bad Axe. Other than the old Fraley, all my tenon saws are LN and LV. I'll give the Bay a try or two before I order the saw from Bad Axe, good but expensive.
Gary

[David Weaver]

I've had to refile all of the saws I've gotten from ebay, especially the ones that were filed crosscut. Not just sharpen, but joint them off or nearly off and refile them.

Saving the searches and using all of the detail just makes it easier to find those deal saws, and then using esnipe makes it easier to keep track of what you're bidding and keep you detached from the auction so you aren't likely to overbuy and have later remorse (plus, you don't have to care when the auction ends).

I think esnipe is a penny per dollar of winning bid (no cost if you don't win). My winning prices on things have dropped so much it more than covers that, and I've backed bids out on things I changed my mind on, too. I would've had to lie to ebay and say I made a mistake to back out my bid or just eat the auction if I'd have entered the number as a max bid on ebay. I don't like doing either of those.

As far as new saws go, the components and saws from the guys making saws now are so exceptional I can't think that anyone would be dissatisfied with a new saw unless they flat couldn't afford it.