First off, if Chatter & Puppy explanations haven't cleared this up for you, I certainly don't think I'll be able to do better. I'll just muddle around and see if any thing "clicks" for you.
Quick summary: Chatter & Puppy are CORRECT! Your understanding of how bidding and proxy bids work is a little fuzzy.
quote:The reason you won this auction is because the CURRENT BID of the auction when you placed your bid was $30.00 with helprose's $34 max proxy bid held by Ebay. (NOTE: Ebay would not allow helprose to bid against self!) At that point, the minimum required bid would be $31.00 ($1.00 minimum bid increment at that level). Your bid of $34.07 was above the minimum required, and so was accepted by Ebay as a valid bid. It ALSO happened to be higher than the $34 bid held in proxy, and so you won! Congrats!
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Originally posted by Chatter:
Hane, if the CURRENT winning bid is $3.14, then any bids after that would have to be at least $3.39 to be accepted by eBay. Hence, your $3.17 snipe did not qualify."
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But I do it many times!! my last one was item #5325407375
History of bidding:
User ID Bid Amount Date of bid
hanemcm US $34.07 Sep-27-04 09:21:05PDT
helprosemary US $34.00 Sep-27-04 09:14:35PDT
helprosemary US $30.00 Sep-22-04 20:08:16 PDT
BTW, as you already figured out, NOT bidding even amounts is a GOOD IDEA!
quote:NOPE! Kcalm4's max bid could have been EXACTLY $3.14 and the exact same thing would have happened in the handling of your bid. The auction starting bid was $2.00. Libr. placed bid of $2.89. When kcalm4 came along, the winning bid displayed on auction screen was $2.00 held by libr. The minimum allowable bid was $2.25 ($0.25 bid increment at this level). Kcalm4 placed a max bid which we have no way of knowing, but it was AT LEAST $3.14. When you came along, the winning bid displayed on the auction screen was $3.14 held by kcalm4. The minimum allowable bid was $3.39 (still $0.25 minimum bid increment). When AS attempted to place your bid of $3.17, ebay would reject it since it didn't exceed the $3.39 minimum allowable bid.
My most recent transaction bid history(the one prompting my original post) was:
User ID Bid Amount Date of bid
kcalm4 US $3.14 Oct-02-04 16:09:53 PDT
librarimom US $2.89 Sep-29-04 12:34:30 PDT
My bid of $3.17 wasn't entered because kcalm4 apparently had a max bid of HIGHER than $3.17.
quote:Puppy's right, but perhaps a clearer(?) way to say it would be: "Any bid for less than 1 bid increment above the CURRENT AUCTION WINNING BID will be rejected by eBay as invalid." If you doubt this statement, go to ANY auction and try to bid LESS than what ebay states is the minimum valid bid -- ebay will not allow it.
Puppy, you said "Any bid for 3 cents above the 'current price' will be rejected by eBay as invalid." I think you're wrong here - it's happened to me too many times. I always snipe with odd pennies and very often, I win the item just by those pennies!
quote:It will be interesting to see if they have ANYTHING to say about it other than to refer you to the bid increment help page. <Like this>
I've emailed ebay for what they have to say about it. I'll let you know what they say.
Understanding/analyzing bid histories will be simple and even fun for you once you "get it"!
