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An eBay guide: How not to drive up the prices like an idiot; Warning: Spammy
Topic Started: May 23 2015, 05:37 AM (830 Views)
80sgirl
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Electroidal Animal Doctor
A lot of people have noticed the prices for animatronic bots and parts has skyrocketed lately. Some of this undoubtedly is due to the increased popularity of animatronics thanks to a certain game. But I believe a lot of it has to do with how people are bidding. To channel Classic Chuck for a moment, some people bid like they have more money than brains.

Want to win auctions at lower prices? STOP BIDDING SO FREAKING EARLY!

As I write this, there is a naked Mitzi/3-stage Helen bot up on eBay. It's a 10 day auction with a starting price of $1. There is more than a WEEK left on the auction, and the current high bid stands at $728.17. Take it from someone who has used eBay for almost 20 years: the only thing bidding this early accomplishes is driving the price up.

Here are some things to keep in mind about eBay:

1 - The normal auctions have a fixed ending time.
2 - They use a proxy bidding system that automatically bids for the high bidder up until their maximum bid is reached.
3 - There is a minimum bid increment that depends on the current price.
4 - The person with the highest maximum bid wins when the time is up.
5 - It doesn't matter whether that bid is placed 7 days, 7 hours or 7 seconds before the auction ends.
6 - In the event two people submit bids for the same amount (or the second person submits a maximum bid lower than the next bid increment) the earlier bid will win.

If people only bid the maximum they were willing to pay, the ideal strategy would be to place your bid as early as possible. The problem is, some people don't know how much they're willing to pay. Or maybe they just want to see themselves as the highest bidder. Or maybe they're just curious how much the current high bidder's maximum is. I don't know. Regardless, if you bid early these people will come along and nibble away at your maximum bid like a little fish pecking the bait off a hook. The only way to win against them if you bid early is to outspend everyone else in a bloody bidding war until you're the only one standing. Need I say that sellers love nibble bidders? Please, feel free to bid early and nibble all you want when you're bidding on my items!

Another drawback of bidding early is shill bidders. This is when the seller has a friend bid on an item or creates another account to bid on the item with the intent of driving the price up. Shill bidders are not allowed, but they're hard to detect since eBay no longer shows usernames in the bid history.

Have a look at the bid history for that Mitzi bot:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=221778466570&showauto=true

First let me say I don't plan on bidding on this auction and I do not know who these people are. But if you look through this list you can see several nibblers at work.

Let me explain what these numbers mean. The light gray numbers are automatic bids placed by eBay's proxy bidding system. Without going into a play-by-play, r***u, a***0 and 2***8 are nibble bidders. If one or more of them aren't shills, that is. They keep pecking away at each others' maximum bids, while the price goes ever higher.

The way to avoid these problems as a buyer is through sniping, where you place one bid for the maximum you are willing to pay as close to the ending time as possible. If you snipe, you MUST know your maximum and enter that amount because you will not have time to place more bids. Let's look at another auction won by sniping.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=161620737361&showauto=true

This one actually had several snipers. Notice the flurry of bidding activity within about a minute of the end. s***j, t***i and i***r are all snipers. i***r made their snipe early enough to nibble a few times, but s***j won because their maximum bid was higher than the other two. I picked this auction because I wanted to point out

SNIPING IS NOT A GUARANTEE OF WINNING! YOU MUST STILL HAVE THE HIGHEST MAXIMUM BID!

What it does do is keep nibble bidders and shills from driving the price up. Your maximum bid is known only to you until you fire it off and with only seconds left on the timer, they don't have time to keep increasing their bids.

Another bonus is some people only bid juuust high enough to put themselves in the lead. When your snipe hits, you can sometimes score things for a bargain price, because they don't have time to react and enter another bid.

There is only ONE type of regular auction where I would enter a bid before the last possible moment, and that is one where the seller has also set a Buy It Now price. Like the bidding starts off at $1 and has a BIN price of $25, but I think I could get it for less. I will bid EXACTLY $1 to make the BIN option disappear. Then I will snipe for my real maximum at the last moment. The drawback is sometimes the actual bidding will go higher than the original BIN, but that's a chance you take.

There are a couple of ways to snipe. You can do it manually by being at the computer or using the mobile app when the timer ticks down, or you can use a sniping service that logs into eBay under your account and places your snipe for you. I'd recommend using a service because the time window is short and losing due to technical problems like your Internet connection dropping really sucks.

I snipe using a service called Gixen. It's free, has unlimited snipes and it's been around for years so they're not a scam. They don't store your account information longer than needed to make your snipe. They also have a paid version that's a steal at $6 a year that adds a few features and a mirror server just in case the main one goes down.

http://www.gixen.com

There are plenty of other sniper services out there, just google eBay auction sniper and you'll find them. But Gixen has always worked for me. If I REALLY, REALLY want an item I will place a manual snipe and use Gixen's snipe as a backup. It doesn't increase the amount that you pay when your sniping service bids for you, since from eBay's perspective it's just you upping your maximum bid at the last second.

Happy bidding.
Edited by 80sgirl, May 23 2015, 07:29 AM.
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Till
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Rhodesian Rolfe
The autism is strong in these nibblers.
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Edited by Till, May 23 2015, 10:05 AM.
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Pixel
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Digital Wizard
Amen, sister Classic Chuck!
Edited by Pixel, May 23 2015, 03:17 PM.
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Evan
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Something never quite "clicked" with me regarding sniping until I read this. Thanks 80sgirl!!
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BeachBearFanSppIa
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The band begins at ten to six When Mr. K. performs his tricks
I have basically gave up on Ebay
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