Reply to "AS no advantage over proxy bids. I despair"

The value of AS was confirmed for me the other day, when I inadvertently put in an eBay bid a day or so before the end of an auction, instead of an AS bid, on an item I was interested in. The amount was my high bid, so I didn't change it.

Sure enough, 18 seconds before the end of the auction, another bidder placed a bid that was £1 below my high bid. So, I was still high bidder, but just two seconds before the end of the auction, the same bidder placed a bid that was (at least) £1 higher than my high bid, and promptly won the auction.

The point is, if my eBay proxy bid had not been stupidly sitting there, doing nothing, the other bidder would have most likely simply bid once, at his (then) top price, which was (we know) £1 lower than my high bid. But if I had sniped, as I had planned, my AS high bid would have been placed a few seconds before the end of the auction, and the eventual winner would not have been able to increase his bid in response. Oh, well.

Ciao,

nobayuk
London, UK