Webley oil can

[micky2]

Nor me, in nearly 20 years and hundreds of auctions.

I have been on there since 2004 and never come across this either.

[edbear2]

There is absolutely no point in leaving a bid on an item other than until the dying seconds. (Unless of course you can't be 'in at the kill'!)

Bidding early just 'shows your hand', ie interest to other bidders, who may be emboldened by your interest and bid against you accordingly. If you leave a high/max bid early all that happens is that other bidders will, rather stupidly in my opinion, keep upping their own bid until it meets yours, or merely increasing the price somewhat unnecessarily - as has been mentioned.

You often see attractive items for sale with three or four bidders each one leapfrogging the other, so that they can each be 'top dog' in turn. Utterly pointless.

Then a canny buyer comes in with five seconds to go and blows the lot of them away. How many times have I seen that. The only reason for having 5 or 10 day auctions in the first place is to make sure an item is seen by as wide an audience as possible.

Anything I have sold on that was particularly desirable has always seen the final price go stratospheric in the last seconds. Same with items I have bought. My record is from £250 with ten seconds to go, to finish at over a grand. I was well pleased! It wasn't an airgun though.

I once sold a couple of early pellet tins to a guy who was not too far away, so said I would deliver them in my lunch hour.......super place in the sticks, probably 6 figures, anyway I was admiring some of his wonderfull collection of stuff when he said he once paid near £1000 for a vintage treen estate made game carrier (thats two sticks with some notches in and some string with a bit of leather nailed on as a hinge to non shottie readers).


It transpired he would sometimes see something, and if not at the end of the auction would put in a silly bid to make sure he won..on this occasion another bidder did the same


ATB, Ed

[Troubledshooter]

Me too - I've not encountered this in over 20 years of bidding on t'bay. The clock usually times out when it says it will.

John M

Ditto.

[Turnup]

I WAS WRONG

The ‘bay in U.K. and ‘gun in Germany sites don’t have that late bid system you mention.
Although I have seen it on certain European auction sites.

A last second bid of the maximum you are prepared to pay stops other bidders responding by increasing their bids incrementally, which pushes the final price up (which is how some people bid)
You have to know how much your prepared to pay and go all in, and if you’re lucky you’ll win it for less than that.

I think shill bids are just to push the price up so a last second shill bid runs the risk of being the actual winning bid which might defeat the point of it.

Matt

I know this happens with some auctions, but not the bay of e. If you miss it, you miss it.

Well I have been on there for 15 years, have a combined feedback over several accounts (for different interests, tend to keep them seperate) of near 3000 at 100% positive, and I have never in all my dealings heard or seen this

The auctions end at the end listing time stated and that's it in my experience.........and as I posted earlier if bidding and able to be at the end, I will decide a maximum I want to spend, then bid with 3-5 seconds to go to allow for lag, have regularly won / lost with bids showing 1 or 2 seconds left, and in 1000's of deals have never seen this "extension" thing

When I started I used to think....."Ohh....It only sold for £30.....wish I had bid more than £29!........not knowing the winner may have actually have bid £500 and been lucky

Like T.S. I have had items skyrocket at the end, not as much but once an old Lewis Leathers jacket of the missus we got for £10 at a car boot went from £18 to £280 in the last 10 seconds.......Winner was in Japan where they like to dress up as 1960's rockers for some reason.

ATB, Ed

The well know European auction site (cat***i) does something similar too.
If someone bids in the last 10 seconds or so it adds another minute.
Probably to realise good prices for the seller but must be frustrating if you are bidding.

Also the German gun auction site has a setting where if a seller has an item with a high starting price, (but a reasonable price if you win it for that) and no ones bid on it with a few minutes to go it’ll automatically add 3 or 4 days to the listing.
This is to stop last minute bids winning it at the starting price.
Been caught out on that where I waited too long to bid and suddenly there’s another week to wait.



In 15 years using evilbay regularly I’ve never encountered this. Maybe in the two occasions the seller set up some strange setting on the auction? Or maybe evilbay was trying that out at the time.

Matt

Me too - I've not encountered this in over 20 years of bidding on t'bay. The clock usually times out when it says it will.

John M

Been furtling around on *that* site and discovered the user help community. Lots of complaints on there about no extensions so it would seem that I was mistaken they do not do that (anymore at least - the experiences I was citing were more than 10 years ago) or perhaps it was another site entirely.