Originally Posted by
Doug Garson
Not sure how you can snipe on Ebay unless I'm misunderstanding sniping. I assume sniping means placing a last second bid pennies over the current high bid. Last time I bid on Ebay you input your maximum bid and the system increased your bid by the minimum increment each time you were overbid until you reached your maximum bid that you input. The system would update your bid in fractions of a second so anyone trying to manually beat the clock would have to be very lucky to win. I can remember trying to snipe, hitting enter when the clock hit 1 second and seeing 4 or 5 bids placed after mine.
When you snipe you still enter your maximum bid, not just pennies above the posted high. If the posted high bidder's max is higher than yours (or other snipers' max bids), then you do not win the auction.
But as Jim and Brian explained, there are various types of bidders on ebay.
A bidder may do like Brian, then see that the later high bid is only a little higher than his/her bid, have a change of mind and say, "Ok, I'll try just one more bid and that's it."
Another may do as Jim mentioned in a later post and keep bidding just a little more till they beat your max.
There may be a shill bidder that wants to raise the price, but doesn't really want the item. That bidder wants to give the real bidders time to raise their bid, else why bid?
Sniping eliminates those bidders. It also eliminates your second guessing yourself. You win or lose on one bid.
Long ago when I sniped I put in a low bid to make sure I got updates, but then no more bids till 15-20 seconds before closing -took that long for my computer to upload my bid on a 56K modem. Now apps will auto bid for you milliseconds before closing.
edit: As Jim intimated, many experienced ebay bidders snipe in some way. That way they don't have to deal with the newbie factor.
Last edited by Charlie Velasquez; 09-30-2018 at 9:32 PM.
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