MRR Auctions - No Sniping? What fun is that?

This makes me wonder if snipers, or nibblers, have a tendancy to pay more for an item on eBay than it's worth. Let's say item X is worth N dollars. A bidder enters a proxy bid for N-Z dollars (compensating for shipping charges, Z). Now along comes the sniper or nibbler who beats out the original bidder at hte last moment at N+1 dollars, paying more than the generally accepted value of item X. Or suppose, not wanting to be outbid, the bidder enters a proxy bid of the normal value of the item + 10%. Now the sniper comes along and, as some of them do, enters a last moment bid of 2X. He gets the item but winds up paying significantly more than the item's street value. I wonder if these are some of the overpriced auctions we hear about on here from time to time. And then the sniper balks at paying because the hidden proxy bid drove up his snipe bid to outlandish levels.

It's worth N$ to you, obviously it was worth N+1$ to the high bidder. Insane bidding frenzies happen at real auctions all the time. All of those who are not high bidders feel the high bidder paid too much. If not, why didn't they bid more?

Paul

Like an idiot, if I were buying bread from an auction store.

In a 7 day auction, there are a total of 604,800 seconds available in which to place a bid. That's how it works. If you place your bid at second number 1, or at second number 604,799, it's a legal bid.

It's not cheating. The high bidder still wins. If I snipe an auction, my bid still has to be higher than yours to win. In your loaf of bread scenario, if your bid for the bread is higher, when I try to grab it from your hand all I come up with is air.

The *strategic* reason for sniping is obvious to anyone who has done much buying or selling on ebay. The suggested strategy is to bid your max and forget it. That's great, and you can do it that way. But not everybody does it that way. There are people who don't really have a maximum amount. They want to know what yours is. So instead of bidding their max and either taking the high bid position, or missing it and saying oh well, they bid a lower amount... and if it doesn't take the high bid, they do it again... and again... and again. Until they pick off the top spot. That's not supposed to be logical, but maybe there are a whole bunch of people out there who don't know what an item is worth, don't care, or bid for sport. For whatever reason, this practice of chipping is quite common especially on an item that attracts multiple bidders.

In any given auction, especially if the item is in any kind of demand, you could very well have max-proxy bidders, snipers, and chippers all at work. The chippers wear down the proxy bidders, and the snipers don't give them a chance to do this. So if you say it's not fair to bid in the final seconds, then it's also not fair to bid multiple times. The proxy bidder might win if the chippers give up and the sniper doesn't top him. But chippers frequently don't win if there is a sniper in the bushes - they are vulnerable because they place small incremental bids easily topped, so the sniper's chances are good of beating him out. Under your rules, it would be the equivalent of a sealed-bid auction, where nobody knows where they stand until the end. Fine, but ebay isn't a sealed bid auction, nor is it a live auction - it's a timed auction. And it's not who leads the most laps, it's who's in front at the end. The problem I see is that ebay encourages you to treat it as a sealed bid auction, "bid your max up front by proxy"... but then when you get outbid, they send you an email saying "don't let this one get away! Place a new bid now..."

What I don't do is use automated software to do my sniping. I don't have an ethical problem with it, nothing of the sort. I deal with software all the time and I don't trust it, period. I want to be there to place the snipe bid myself, and I want to make my decision right there. Often I've had a final bid ready to go, and at the last second, just said ah hell, it's not worth that much, and didn't push the button. The snipe software wouldn't give me that interactive option, so I don't use it.

Andy

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- Pre-Interstate Urban Archaeology

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General frustration with the world, amen. I have been trying to improve my verbal skills for the better part of 15 years now, and have met with some measurable success, but all too often, especially in traffic, I find myself communicating with "hand signals" :-)

Today in a merging lane with barrels, a guy in a pickup cut right in front of me to avoid going off the exit where he didn't want to be. I couldn't move over because there was another truck to the left of me, so I just jabbed the brakes and kind of threw my hands up like "what can I do?". Guy in the truck returned the same gesture... it was sort of like "sorry but I had to get out of that lane". It was cool... and an improvement. Probably won't go as well next time but... ya have to pat yourself on the back once in a while for _not_ losing it :-)

Andy

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- Pre-Interstate Urban Archaeology

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That's a very poor analogy. Here's a better one: A guy goes into a movie theatre and he sees a really good empty seat right where he wants to go. Before he can get there, a big fat lady sits in it. He says, "ma'am, I had my eye on that seat". She replies "Yes, but look what I've got on it now."

NO SPAM lycos.com> wrote:

I think it's less.

Here's how I see it. Tom, Dick and Harry all decide to snipe on item X. It's at $50. Since you used "worth" in your example, let's say it's worth $100. Tom would pay $75, Dick would pay $80, and Harry would pay $100. Instead of bidding the max, they all wait until the last 30 seconds and bid $55.51. Each one has a 33% chance of getting it for almost half price. If they're patient, all 3 of them will get what they want eventually.

Here's the Surpise Ending: If they all proxy bid instead, none of them will get it. Enos will buy it for $101. He doesn't care how high it goes. Enos doesn't like them, even though they are saving him money.

Joe, Some interesting thoughts. Do you think then that early interest and bids tend to attract attention to an item and help to drive prices up? Possibly. If so why and is there something you have observed that leads you to this conclusion? If this theory is correct then I can see how it may be prudent to watch an item "quietly" and bid late in the auction possibly still holding to your upper limit. In this case you still let logic rule the outcome but may stand a better chance of not having to pay your top price.

Lynn

I don't know what Joe thinks but my experience says a big YES. I believe that bidding wars, like flame wars, tend to take on a life of their own. No logic expressed or implied. If you quietly sit and snipe at the end your odds of a bargain go way up, vs. showing the world you're interested early and causing the other guy to feel as though he has to beat your bid. That just leads to a vicious cycle which I opt out of. I will place a minimum bid, the lowest allowed, as soon as I see the item up for bid, but no more until "the sniping zone".

Jim

-- Jim Sherman xROADKILL snipped-for-privacy@zYAHOOa.COM < remove lower case letters, then use what's left AS lower case

The hurrider I goes the behinder I gets; which makes sense because the older I gets the more behind I gets. And I is gettin an old behind!

What I have observed is maybe 5% of my customers proxy bid, and 95% of them don't. They either kick it up a dollar, or they bid erratically. A few will bid 12 or 15 times until they pop the high bidder off, they they're satisfied. What logical reason would anybody have to bid like this? I just think they enjoy it, and the reasons for many of the bids are mainly psychological. There's certainly not much logic to it. So then what's a reasonable strategy for competing with these bidders?

The second thing I've observed, which I think I already mentioned, is you can email a bidder and offer to sell item X at price Y cut and dried without the auction (like in the case of a deadbeat winning bidder). They won't even reply. Try it yourself.

I notice when we have arguments on here about bidding, there is apparently a widespread misconception that people bid their maximums. Almost nobody actually bids that way on my auctions. The job of the auctioneer or auction house is to psych people into paying absolutely as much as they will pay. People can be manipulated by the auction. They can become competitive and bid too much. Others will stick to the maximum but they may still feel the temptation.

Actually most snipers do bid their max on the snipe bid - so if Tom bid 75, Dick bid 80, and Harry bid 100 - it really wouldn't matter which order they bid as long as all made it under the wire. Harry would get the item for $81.

Yep. But Enos won't bid a proxy for 101, he'll just place 12 bids until he gets it there. If he only goes to $51, then he ends up in

4th place behind Tom Dick & Harry :-)

The problem isn't the proxy bidders, it's not the snipers - it's the chippers who make the proxy worthless, and sniping is the only defense.

Andy

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- Pre-Interstate Urban Archaeology

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Now if you make that offer to a bidder to make a deal offline by taking the item down that is against eBay rules. If you want to really get technical it is against eBay rules to contact the bidder and make a separate deal offline on a similar item as well. Obviously that's in their best interest to make rules against that, no fees associated with the deal other than the listing fee. But you also run the risk of dealing with someone who would squeal to eBay if they are not satisfied. It is also bad for the bidder if the deal goes bad because they have little recourse.

CBix

Lynn Caron wrote: : : Why do you wait to the last minute to put in your high proxy bid and not : place it at the beginning. : Wouldn't it save you having to check back and bid again? : I put any interesting items into my bidding program. Some of the items are a "how high will the morons go on this item?", some are "well, perhaps I'll enter a snipe amount", and some items are a "I want this".

The nice thing about a bidding tool is that it bids for me, regardless if I am in a meeting, sleeping, out, etc. It also is not tempted to raise the bid price I entered. Nor does anybody else know that I am interested in that particular item until 3 seconds are left in the auction. And, if the bid has passed me by, people still don't know!

Yes, I look at the bid history of most everybody who is bidding on an item I am interested in, just to get a feel how high they are likely to go.

The bidding tool also prevents people from looking at MY bidding history, and finding "marker bids" on items that THEY missed. ;-)

Bruce

I have been trying to explain it for several years now. If I bid 50, and a chipper takes it up to 51, then I can throw my 80 in at the last minute. If I bid 80 up front, the chipper(s) will take it up to 81, and I'll have to go 82 - or higher. Last minute bidding is basically a defense against bidders who don't really have a set value in mind, and bid repeatedly until they top the current high bidder. By staying out of it early, I deprive them of the opportunity to run the price up. There are many other scenarios, but it's amazing how many times this one comes up.

I once won an auction against two opponents who could have both easily topped my bid by a factor of 10 (found out who they were after the fact). But they were obsessively bidding against each other, upping the price a notch at a time. Each of them threw a final bid in at the last second, hoping to knock off the other with the "final word", but my snipe bid was substantially higher. They didn't see me coming. Had I placed that same bid even 5 minutes sooner, one or both of these bidders would have topped it. So I got an item I really wanted, for slightly less than what I was willing to pay - instead of watching it go to someone else for more than my max.

Sniping is for stuff I really want... often there might be 10 of the same thing on ebay at once. I'm not going to snipe high to win the first one, if I can have a shot at 9 more of them in the coming days. I use it for the special items I really want.

Andy

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- Pre-Interstate Urban Archaeology

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After all this apparently endless blather about "sniping", there are two things that should be perfectly clear to even the most casual observer:

1) "Sniping" is an effective technique to win eBay auctions you might otherwise lost, and to leave competitors who might have bid higher whimpering on the sidelines. You KNOW it's an effective technique because the people who snipe love it -- and those who don't snipe are constantly bitching and moaning about it.

2) People who know how, when and why to snipe -- but who spend their time trying to educate the non-snipers on this newsgroup -- would be much better off just keeping quiet . . . :-)

Mongo

Not all bidders can check the auction site every 2 hours for new auctions. Some like me, only check once or twice a week (which to some would say I'm not really interested and should not be allowed to bid anyway.).