I'm new to this and have my eye on an item that i don't want to lose. i'm a little hesitant to rely solely on AS since I have no experience with it. Should I manually enter a bid and then snipe it with a higher bid...since, as i understand it, i can't outbid myself? that is, i'll still pay the same if no one exceeds my first bid...or am i totally confused? help!

AS is a 'machine' that bids on your behalf so isn't 100% reliable. The highest bid always wins - the idea of using AS is to avoid bidding wars so if you manually bid then you defeat the object (unless you wait 'til the end and snipe manually). Nothing is rare on ebay so your item will probably appear again. If I was you I'd either set a snipe or bid manually at the end - not both!

R2

quote:

as i understand it, i can't outbid myself?

Correct. This is an exception - if your manual bid isn't a full increment above the 2nd highest bid, but that's not typical.