Picking up on this thread again, and especially the posts about sniping, and the last one comparing Ebay with a normal auction.
First, Ebay is not like a live auction. You don't have to be there at the last minute. Furthermore, there is a lot of scope for psychology, and "hiding your hand".
Follow the logic and the psychology of this.....
Essentially, there are four types of bidders.
A. Stick your top price on and leave it
B. Nibble at it
C. Wait until the last minute and bite
D. Snipe at it in the last 10 seconds
Problem with A.
You can end up paying
more than you need to! That's because a nibbler (or several of them) push your proxy bid higher and higher. Even if they nibble and then give up, they have made you pay more. If there was little
real activity, and only nibblers at work, then they increase the bid by 50c or $1 at a time.... and the price tends to stay low until the last minute when the serious guys get in. Sometimes it just stays low. And you will win your knife for £1.00 more.... and $50 less than your max.
Problem with B.
Nibblers rarely win, except when bidding against other nibblers. They can always be beaten by a determined A, C and D. Always look at the bidding history on an item and look for nibbling. AND always look at their feedback, and then the items that they have won, to see their pattern of bidding. Nibblers are easy to identify. If you are bidding against a nibbler, then let him think that he has beaten you and that you have given up! (You can't do that if you are type A).
C is good.
You haven't shown your hand, and especially if you are bidding against nibblers, then a $10 higher bid will always beat them. They simply don't have the time left to nibble twice! BUT you can be beaten by type A or another type C. If there is a type A in the auction, then you can see that because the nibblers gradually push up his early bid. So as a type C, then you are just going to have to pop on your max and hope.
D. Sniping is good.
Its the same as C but you get to go to sleep and have a life.
But then..... you can start to get clever if you are a sniper. It works on the basis of trying to identify what type of person the other bidders are. That's dead easy if there are lots of bids already. You can identify the (A) Pop max on and leave it (because you see the nibblers pushing him up). You can identify the nibblers really easily.
If there are only a few bids, then look at their feedback, and what they bought, and the bidding pattern of what they won. Then you can see if they were an A (pop their max on) or a B (A nibbler), or a C/D too!
Know your competition!
If there are really only a very few bids.... then
tease them!! You're gonna snipe anyway, but you need to find out who they are! Pop on a bid of $10 more, and see what their reaction is. A nibbler will take several bids to reach you.
And you stop bidding! Let him think that you have given up. The price is now still much lower than what you would be prepared to pay! Your last minute bid or snipe will always beat him.
A live (and current) example. Look carefully at the dates and times of the bids. The auction started at 35.00, and with a bid by bidder A.
Bidder A £91.00 30-Dec-04 09:44:04
ME £89.00 30-Dec-04 00:57:44
Bidder A £79.00 30-Dec-04 09:43:37
Bidder A £65.00 30-Dec-04 09:43:21
Bidder A £49.00 29-Dec-04 14:27:16
Bidder B £38.00 30-Dec-04 00:09:44
Bidder A started it at 35.00 on 29 December, by placing a 49.00 bid.
Bidder B poked one on of 38.00 and gave up.
I left it for a day, and then put on 89.00 (way lower than my real max)
(I wanted to see what bidder A would do. I was teasing him)
Sure enough... he nibbled. 65.00 then 79.00 and then 91.00 or greater.
There is absolutely no sense in me adding normal bids again
That would just make him nibble up again and push me higher. If I was a type A (put on my my max bid) then he would push the price up!!! I want it as low as possible.
However... note that his last bid was on 30 December at 09.44.
And, as I didn't respond, he thinks I have given up!
Great! That's what I want him to think!
I have no idea what his max bid really is, but looking at the pattern, his extra nibbles are between 15.00 and 20.00. It is unlikely that he will be over 101.00.
Therefore.... my snipe in the last 10 seconds - of even my max - cannot be beaten by him. It will raise his last bid by 2.00 ..... if he's there at the last moment to bid again, then he'll try! Inside that last 10 seconds
But he simply doesn't have enough time to bid twice!
He cannot beat me!! AND... he cannot push me much higher!
And
there is the advantage of sniping rather than showing my hand with my max as a normal bid!
The auction finishes 08-Jan-05 13:22:04
My snipe.... I'll tell you. Its my real max price. WAY WAY higher!
Can I still be beaten... yes... sure. But not by him. Because he isn't putting on his max price. He is a nibbler.
Oh... and don't worry, its not anyone here
It isn't even a knife.
(I won the knife I wanted earlier
)
Rod
