Shill bidders often 'nibble bid' up to just over the highest bid that has been placed. They then withdraw the bid leaving the highest genuine bid in place. The person with that bid will get the item at their highest they bid if it wins. They will not get it cheaper at any of the bid increment stages as the shill bidder has increased those levels.
Bid late and at your highest is sometimes the best way to win an item at the cheapest price
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.
This is how auctions work. Interested parties compete with each other so that the seller gets the highest price anyone is prepared to pay. Sniping does nothing to change that. Auctions get time extended when there are late bids so a limit bidder still gets another bid in unless it goes over his limit. The possible losers are those who do not limit bid, they just nibble one bid at a time and can therefore get caught napping. Must have not wanted it all that much. Putting in a limit bid does not mean that is the price you end up paying, it's exactly like a comission bid in a conventional auction.
True freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes or do foolish things and bear the consequences.
TANSTAAFL
Vintage Airguns Gallery
..Above link posted with permission from Gareth W-B
In British slang an anorak is a person who has a very strong interest in niche subjects.
Of course the bayis an auction like any other, except for the fact that it is time limited. There is no time extension. When that clock runs out there can be no further bids. In an auction room the auctioneer will delay dropping the hammer if he thinks there may be another bid or two yet to come. Not so on the bay . Hence there is no point in bidding early, a bay auction is quite different to a conventional auction in that way.
If 'sniping' did not offer an advantage on occasions then it wouldn't be used as often as it is?
In a conventional auction the lot is up and gone in under a minute usually. On the bay buyers can have up to ten days to mull things over, to enter bids, retract them or increase them. Both types of auction are in detail inherently different, though obviously the concept is similar!
Oh yes there is when a bid lands close to the cut off time. A little more time is allowed for a response bid and this carries on until someone gives up. It's only at most another 60 seconds for each extention but there can be several of them. I don't know if there is a limit to how many times this can happen but it certainly does happen - been there and done that and this is why I switched to limit bidding. I don't know if other bidders can join in during the extention or if it is only the protagonists. Because of this a sniper cannot beat a limit bid unless he bids more than the limit.
True freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes or do foolish things and bear the consequences.
TANSTAAFL
Vintage Airguns Gallery
..Above link posted with permission from Gareth W-B
In British slang an anorak is a person who has a very strong interest in niche subjects.
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 only auctions that l know that give extra time on bids is one in the USA can't remember the name. they give what they call the 15 minute rule at the end of the time set. where it gives 15 minutes extra time from the last highest bid. which gives other bidders a chance to bid higher in the 15 minutes. which will go on until there is no more bids in the extra 15 minute time limit.
Then our experiences differ. This has happened to me on two occasions, one a rare compass and one a Fortin Barometer. On both occasions I wanted the items and was attempting manual sniping as the cut off apporoached. Aonother bidder put in a late bid and I was allowed another go (IIRC about 50 seconds) and on one of those occasions twice!
True freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes or do foolish things and bear the consequences.
TANSTAAFL
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
Vintage Airguns Gallery
..Above link posted with permission from Gareth W-B
In British slang an anorak is a person who has a very strong interest in niche subjects.
Currently looking for Baikal Makarov pistols with the following prefixes to the serial number: 98, T01, T09, T21, T22
Prefer boxed or cased but will consider loose examples too.