I really am mystified that this issue is running up against a wall. I thought that people experiment with sniping. I never lost on a 4 second snipe! It works great! The reason I want a close snipe is that it doesn't matter how high your reserve is..when your bid comes in at the wire and then the auction ends, it ends. The next increment can't up the price. At five seconds, you can lose to a higher bidder. I took a course on buying and selling on ebay at my college. Our professor introduced our class to auction sniper and the 4 second rule. He said you can have a million dollar reserve and still lose the item for pennies if the next increment bid comes in when the auction ends. He stated that he only used 4 seconds and though rare, he did lose on 5 second leads. I have won many items on 4 seconds with no problem. I still have yet to see a solid answer as to why it was changed to 5 seconds when 4 seconds would always win. I thought auction deities would know a lot of facts, but it seems like everyone is just hemming and hawing and just going by hear-say instead of experience. I'm curious to how many snipes are behind everyones comments. The 5 second restriction is just opportunity for higher bid increments to register before the auction ends and there was no reason for 5 second lead aside from that.