Reply to "outbid by "hidden" bidder"

Maven, you were outbid, pure and simple. The other bidder's proxy bid from five days earlier was higher than your last second snipe of $82.17. You have no way of knowing how much that party actually bid, because his maxmimum bid is not shown, just the amount needed to win. He may have bid $100 or more. At that level, the bid increments are $1, so your $82.17 snipe simply raised his proxy bid of whatever amount to your bid amount, plus $1 more was enough to beat you, the second highest bidder. He still had an even higher amount, but you don't know what that was. I say this because your unusual amount (good tactic) was surpassed. Had you bid $84 and he won at $85, I would say he may have only bid $85, but given the unusual amounts, he bid more--maybe $92.34, maybe $100 even, maybe $101.28. Who knows? The only thing you DO know is that his bid was higher than your snipe.

Prior to your snipe, the amount of his bid was simply shown as $1 more than whoever the next highest bidder was. For example, if before your snipe the highest anyone else (other than the winner) bid was $61, then the high bid showed at $62 from the guy who later won. Your snipe raised that price significantly, but it still was not high enough to win.

This all points back to the same thing. Decide your max well in advance, then bid that at the very last second, through AS. If you win, great--and you will win most of the time, unless you are bidding pittances. But when you do lose, it is usually because someone else was willing to pay more than you were. As Steve says, it's not the last bid that counts, it's the highest one. We snipe because not everyone places his highest bid--most are willing to keep bidding higher and higher, and we do not give them that chance. In this particular case it did not work, but you will find that in most cases, it will!

Learn as much as you can about eBay's proxy bidding system. Read their tutorials. You already found Auction Sniper, so you will be at an advantage!