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Betting on e-bay and remaining time ....

I

igmolinav

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 15, 2005
1,126
4
Hi,

It is a very simple question .....

When I have bought from e-bay, (very few times), I did in the "buy it now" modality. However, this time I´ll have to watch the item until time runs out.

My question is, can you bet within the last minute of the auction - I mean, when there are only the last sixty seconds left ??

Thank you,

igmolinav
 
igmolinav said:
Hi,

It is a very simple question .....

When I have bought from e-bay, (very few times), I did in the "buy it now" modality. However, this time I´ll have to watch the item until time runs out.

My question is, can you bet within the last minute of the auction - I mean, when there are only the last sixty seconds left ??

Thank you,

igmolinav
Click to expand...

Yes you can.
 
I've read some very interesting statistical analyses of eBay bidding.

Basically, the earlier and the more often you bid on a single sale, the more likely you are to lose, as when you bid, you are giving away information about yourself (in a statistical sense) to the other bidders.

So, only make one bid, and make it as late as possible.

The other thing is that if you have a crowd of people who all make an estimate of the value of something, the true value is likely to be somewhere in that range.

If you win an ebay auction, you have made the highest estimate of that crowd and therefore you have almost certainly overestimated the value of the item.

So winning an auction is often worse than losing.

Be prepared to lose many times if you want to get value for your money.

Go for items with few bidders (so that you are not the highest bidder of a large crowd, as that's highly likely to be a worse deal than being the highest bidder of a small crowd)

Just some tips. I rarely bid on Ebay as I find many things end up overpriced, and I prefer to see items from private sellers before paying money.

----
EDIT: Loose / lose - wish these homoymns would loosen up or I'll lose it.
 
igmolinav said:
Hi,

It is a very simple question .....

When I have bought from e-bay, (very few times), I did in the "buy it now" modality. However, this time I´ll have to watch the item until time runs out.

My question is, can you bet within the last minute of the auction - I mean, when there are only the last sixty seconds left ??

Thank you,

igmolinav
Click to expand...

Yes, you can. What are you bidding on? Tell me and I'll show you how sniping really works. :D :D :D
If you have a fast internet connection, and good nerves, you can pretty much wait till mere seconds before the end of the auction to bid. Only problem is that you have to know the MAX you are willing to go on an item or you could still be beat out by a proxy bid. I even used to have snipe software, but I don't snipe anymore. :D :D :D
 
never bid on an item until the last 2-3 minutes not 5 minutes 2 preferably if your refresh fast

if you bid early some one might out bid you bringing the price up

what i wanted to get to is that i think sellers will login under another username and out bid you to jack up the price outrageously on ususpecting bidders so when you outbid them its alot more than you would have paid normally

thats why i wait till two minutes left and hit it hard with a max bid youre comfortable with
sometimes two minutes is still too long more like 1 minute
 
Old Smuggler said:
what i wanted to get to is that i think sellers will login under another username and out bid you to jack up the price outrageously on ususpecting bidders so when you outbid them its alot more than you would have paid normally
Click to expand...

This practice is known as shill bidding and is against eBay's rules. If you have evidence of it, be sure to report the seller to eBay.
 
yeah i think they did it to me once dont remember if i bought the item or let them win because it was too much
but i didnt let it happen to me when i bought my first mac
it was an eMac 1.25 superdrive from compusa auctions for 400 dollars
right when the 1.42 version was released
it was a demo model not a refurb they said
it is the first emac to use usb 2.0 and the new Airport extreme 802.11g card i believe

i thought i got a pretty goood deal orig box and dvd's and manuals
i did what i stated above waited till 1 1/2 minutes left and max bid 480 to be safe
compusa auctions is pretty good but they dont have apple computers very often you gotta look daily
 
lol ebay is great.

Back in late March-Early April I sold my First Generation Silver 4gb Mini with remote and armband and a few other stuff to some sucker for about $190/$195. hahah i ended up breaking even having previously sold unopen iPod stand earphones from $20-35 each when people thought they were cool for having white earphones.
 
Old Smuggler said:
i would like to know about this snipe software
Click to expand...
AFAIK it only runs on Windows. Unless it is capable of submitting something within seconds of auction close, I don't really see the difference between using it and the max price function on eBay (which, presumably, you wouldn't want to bid over anyhow) or waiting till the very end of the auction and sniping yourself manually (presumably, eBay's servers have something that would block a bombardment of bids in a second's time from a single IP, but who knows?). Though I've lost a few auctions to bids that were literally placed within the final seconds (even if there weren't any bids for minutes or even hours beforehand), and I have to wonder if this is sniping software or someone being clever and patient.
 
If there is something I really want to win, I use the 2 browser window approach. One to monitor the action and the other to place bids at the very last second.
 
WildCowboy said:
This practice is known as shill bidding and is against eBay's rules. If you have evidence of it, be sure to report the seller to eBay.
Click to expand...
Looooooooong story short, I found a seller and his "partner" were shill bidding. Had what I thought was pretty darn good evidence as well. Reported it to Ebay. They came back weeks later saying that there was no evidence of a rules violation. Bottom line, if you have reason to believe someone is shill bidding, run, don't walk, away from that item and that seller.

On the other hand, if you ever get ripped off by a seller. I mean really ripped off, like you pay but get nothing at all, you can try to go through Ebay, but do yourself a favor and report it to the FBI's internet fraud unit. They can be found online, and the complaint form can be done online as well. Some coworkers and myself got ripped for $50 ($10 each). I reported it. A year later a prosecutor from California emailed me for more info. About a year later, they emailed me again for my current mailing address. A few weeks later, got a check and a letter from the court detailing the ripoff artists punishment. It was pretty steep. Seems they ripped off a few people.

Just thought I would share that for whatever it's worth.
 
Always look for mis-spelled items first. If possible try to only bid once during the last 60 seconds. If there are a lot of bidders forget about the auction. And never never ever bid during the hoilday seasons..... big no no
 
There is a widget that looks for misspelled ebay titles, and avoiding holiday's is good, ebay is definitely a sellers market.
 
its all about anything with value:

ITS ONLY WORTH WHAT SOMEONE IS WILLING TO PAY FOR IT!

my dad taught me this when i heard a mickey mantle baseball card was worth a boatload of money, so I said "If I had one Id be rich" and he basically said "No, youd have a card worth a lot of money, but youd need to find someone willing to pay what YOU think its worth. Usually they are paying what THEY think its worth"

On eBay that means that some people dont have access to some things, like certain DVDs or electronics, pez dispensers, clothes, dishes, antiques etc, and they will pay more than you might at a store right down the street.

Whoever wins an auction, assuming no shill bidding has occured, paid what they truly thought the item was worth. Whether you think they paid too much, is not the point, its that eBay is for SELLERS not buyers.

I use eBay as a place to showcase my art, sell things I dont like anymore, things I find at GoodWill, and typically as a place to price check things I see in a store.

If a DVD is $19.99 at Best Buy, but has gone for $16 with shipping on eBay, why not just take the eBay one? Is $3 really worth waiting? Thats why eBay works.
 
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