Or if it's just a 'would be nice', bid the maximum you really want to pay for it, and ignore it for a week until someone demands money. eBay will spam you if you get outbid, but the mails don't always arrive that fast so the 'bid high bid late' people may well beat you if you're not watching like a hawk.
There are places you can pay to watch-like-a-hawk for you, but I've never yet wanted something that much.
Decide the maximum amount you are prepared to pay and bid a 'random' number of pence more than that. Eg bid £5.17 rather than £5.00. That way, you'll beat most other users whose price limit is £5, but you'll lose to someone who thinks the object is worth £6, which is well and good since you've already decided that the object isn't worth that much to you.
I wouldn't worry about the bidding late thing, myself; the way eBay is set up so that you input a maximum price and it automatically bids the lowest amount that wins the auction means that this is pretty unnecessary. If you're hoping to get something for £5 but prepared to pay £10 if you have to, then bid £10 (or rather, £10.07). That way, if you can win the auction with £5, you will win it automatically. And if you actually need £10, you won't have to mess around rebidding at the last minute, you'll already have the bid in.
The trouble is that many eBay users don't really understand proxy bidding or don't have a clear idea of what they are prepared to spend. Bidding early may encourage those people to outbid you when they otherwise would not. So bidding late can save you money or let you win items you otherwise wouldn't. The two disadvantages of bidding late are (1) if there are two equal maximum bids, the earlier bidder wins (2) if there's a technical problem at the last minute, you can fail to bid at all.
Bidding late does make a difference in my experience.
In theory, the person with the highest bid wins, no matter when it was made. On the face of it, if someone comes along and bids £11 when you had decided not to spend over £10 on it then you've lost the auction fair and square. (This is the reasoning eBay gives for asserting that so-called sniping isn't a problem.)
In practice, there are people out there who seem to think "Oh, it's worth £7" - then, when that bid isn't high enough will think "Actually it's probably worth £9" and then again "Hmm, I think I want this enough to pay £11 for it". This person will win your item if you plonk your £10 bid down straight away. On the other hand, if you bid £5 and then at the last minute trump their £7 bid with a £10 bid you stand a much greater chance of winning the item.
(Last year I did actually win an item competing against someone who was raising in small increments. I placed my winning bid about 3 minutes before the end - if I'd waited another 90 seconds then I'd probably have got it £5 to £10 cheaper.)
In a sense, by placing your bid early you are showing others what you think it's worth and this may have an effect on the market value of the item. It's a complicated science…
Or use <a href="http://www.bidnapper.com>Bidnapper</a>, who have a 10-day free trial, or one of the many freeware sniping utilities (though these of course are limited by the stability of the machine youi run them on - bidnapper are the least outage-prone service I've used).
I don't think you'll have ferocious competition for this particular item, but bidding later rather than sooner, so you have an idea how it's turning out, is always a good idea.
Agreed. The downside of bidding early is that it tends to cause people who don't have a clear idea of what the item is worth to them (and I suspect they're in the majority) to revise their opinion upwards - bidding wars ensue, and neither eBay nor the vendor mind this one jot. The downside of last-minute bidding (aka sniping) is that (in the case of reserve price auctions) you don't *know* that you'll get it, and that once in a while a vendor might cancel an auction if it attracts little or no interest in the first few days.
The solution, of course, is for eBay to instead use a "sealed bid" system. Everyone makes a bid, and when the auction period is over, they're all opened, the highest being the winner. That's nice and simple, and immune to the vagaries of last-minute bidding.
Unfortunately, it gets a lower price, and eBay's actual customer is the vendor. Furthermore, eBay's fee is based on a percentage of the selling price…
That too. This auction (http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws3/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=5302528769)'s bid history is very informative - vkc2000 is me, I took one look and thought "Ah. We're dealing with a lunatic nibble bidder. Snipe, and snipe high." It's very often new or low-feedback users who use the "nibble" style of bidding - those of us who've learnt how to get what we want seem to learn better :)
Sniping at the genuine max you're willing to pay can work too, especially for items that don't have heated bidding wars going on.
Psychological. Once you've bid on something, you have an interest in it, you already feel it's part yours. Makes you far less willing to let it go. That's why I first took to sniping - makes it much less traumatic to lose an auction when you haven't been putting emotional effort into it all week :)
Decide what it's worth to you - remembering to check how much for postage - and bid that immediately, then go away and forget about it. You can't win a bidding war against "sniping" software, and there's no point trying anyway, coz ebay will do the bidding for you, up to your stated maximum bid. If you get an email saying you won, hurrah. If you get an email saying you lost, there'll be another along in a minute. Don't forget to check for cheap retailers on the web - sometimes 2nd hand on ebay costs more than new retail, if you hunt around a bit.
If you snipe at the maximum you are prepared to pay, and don't get it, it's too expensive, so not knowing whether you will get it isn't a downside. (You can *know* by putting in a stupidly high bid.) Unless you decide a maximum price, snipe, then decide moments later that actually it's worth more than that after all...
I think the strategy you adopt depends on whether you very much want a specific thing, or are trawling a general category for interesting stuff. Almost everything I've bought on eBay has been in the latter case, and I've just bid in a vaguely interested way, quite happy to be outbid if it goes over my (usually quite penny-pinching) maximum - lots of low-concern items rather than a few must-haves. I've been sufficiently successful at this that I've saturated my needs for trashy martial arts films and pretty jewellery ...
That's no solution. It's annoying for the buyer, who may have very little idea of what the item might be worth and so can't put in a sensible bid - and then can have no idea whether or not he will win the item until the auction is over - and it almost certainly doesn't fetch the best price for the seller (unless one of the buyers is intimidated into placing a stupidly high bid).
And yes, eBay has a vested interest in fetching the highest price. Nothing particularly wrong with that.
The solution, if one be needed, to the "problem" of last-minute bidding would be to automatically extend the auction until some time (say, 1-4 hours) has elapsed since the last bid.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 07:14 am (UTC)If you really want whatever it is, of course :)
Bidding on eBay.
Date: 2004-06-17 07:40 am (UTC)Write a cron job to bid at the last moment.
Damn. I didn't just write that. ;^)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 07:44 am (UTC)There are places you can pay to watch-like-a-hawk for you, but I've never yet wanted something that much.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 07:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 08:06 am (UTC)I wouldn't worry about the bidding late thing, myself; the way eBay is set up so that you input a maximum price and it automatically bids the lowest amount that wins the auction means that this is pretty unnecessary. If you're hoping to get something for £5 but prepared to pay £10 if you have to, then bid £10 (or rather, £10.07). That way, if you can win the auction with £5, you will win it automatically. And if you actually need £10, you won't have to mess around rebidding at the last minute, you'll already have the bid in.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 09:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 09:28 am (UTC)In theory, the person with the highest bid wins, no matter when it was made. On the face of it, if someone comes along and bids £11 when you had decided not to spend over £10 on it then you've lost the auction fair and square. (This is the reasoning eBay gives for asserting that so-called sniping isn't a problem.)
In practice, there are people out there who seem to think "Oh, it's worth £7" - then, when that bid isn't high enough will think "Actually it's probably worth £9" and then again "Hmm, I think I want this enough to pay £11 for it". This person will win your item if you plonk your £10 bid down straight away. On the other hand, if you bid £5 and then at the last minute trump their £7 bid with a £10 bid you stand a much greater chance of winning the item.
(Last year I did actually win an item competing against someone who was raising in small increments. I placed my winning bid about 3 minutes before the end - if I'd waited another 90 seconds then I'd probably have got it £5 to £10 cheaper.)
In a sense, by placing your bid early you are showing others what you think it's worth and this may have an effect on the market value of the item. It's a complicated science…
Re: Bidding on eBay.
Date: 2004-06-17 10:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 10:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 10:39 am (UTC)Unfortunately, it gets a lower price, and eBay's actual customer is the vendor. Furthermore, eBay's fee is based on a percentage of the selling price…
Second attempt
Date: 2004-06-17 10:53 am (UTC)Sniping at the genuine max you're willing to pay can work too, especially for items that don't have heated bidding wars going on.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 10:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 12:31 pm (UTC)You can't win a bidding war against "sniping" software, and there's no point trying anyway, coz ebay will do the bidding for you, up to your stated maximum bid.
If you get an email saying you won, hurrah. If you get an email saying you lost, there'll be another along in a minute.
Don't forget to check for cheap retailers on the web - sometimes 2nd hand on ebay costs more than new retail, if you hunt around a bit.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-17 01:25 pm (UTC)Unless you decide a maximum price, snipe, then decide moments later that actually it's worth more than that after all...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-18 02:33 am (UTC)Well, _nearly_ saturated ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-18 04:45 am (UTC)And yes, eBay has a vested interest in fetching the highest price. Nothing particularly wrong with that.
The solution, if one be needed, to the "problem" of last-minute bidding would be to automatically extend the auction until some time (say, 1-4 hours) has elapsed since the last bid.