If some of you have followed the Ho correspndence, the criticism was made that given the variabilty of AS Sunday sniping, it was well worth bidding yourself with a far greater degree of accuracy.

Tonight I put this thesis to the test. Let me disabuse anybody who thinks this was a controlled scientific experiment ......

I had followed this camera all week, rare though superficially abused, it would easily fetch £50. All week at £2.99 and no bids! 14 miinutes to go, I decided to check with AS to see what figure I had lodged. Absolutely nothing! (You youngsters will find that old age makes the mind play cruel tricks!)

Hey! Never mind, I am an expert sniper, able to control my bid down to the last second - its Thursday afternoon after all - no leads & lags to worry about here. Used Mrs M's countdown programme for the first time - set it to refresh every 10 seconds. (to make this link work remove hyphen in "Javascript")

Set my watch. Open new window, made certain I'd registered first (done that before, with 10 seconds to go and ebay asks you to register!) Placed bid in box - moved through to last screen. Absolutely ready to go.

Screen refreshes - 30 seconds - damn, new bid for £12.60 (mentally adjust to new higher figure - AS can't do that can it?) 20 - 15 Bid now? No, too soon this is to prove Ho right - calm now 10, 9, 8, 7 GO

The result >>>Final Bidding<<<

There we have it - proof positive that manual bidding can adjust for all those other last second snipes and instantly respond with a higher bid - something AS can never do.

Only one slight snag, as you see my bid just didn't make it on time!

Simple question forum, what did I do wrong?
Are we really inferior to machines?

Sobbing noises off stage............
It was worth £50................
I have not seen one on ebay for a year ........
More sobbing noises ............

If it's any consolation, high bidders real max was probably £60 or more...

LOL! Interesting tale, indeed! But I could not see the bid history, as each time I clicked on the link, the server could not be found.

Chatter, it was a glich, I think from AS. I could not bring up anything yesterday. It does come up now, however.