I hope you will excuse this, but I have "lifted" this topic from the support board (Auction Sniper placing early bids - mz.babz) because I feel it needs some discussion and advice from experienced snipers to those new to the game.
First we had Sara saying:
"You bid manually on that auction early on signifantly driving the price up and alerting your competetion that you may be bidding again"
Then Region2:
"Don't bid manually then snipe (unless you have too much money and want to give it away! To me!!)"
Don't get me wrong, in principle I agree with Sarah - 80% of my bids are sniped and I give no early indication to my opponents that I am bidding. This is particularly important if the item is rare or the description is totally incorrect and I sense a bargain to be had!
However, this is where you have a general idea of where the price is heading - you can generally sense people's interest by the bidding pattern.
One of the two exceptions, I feel, are reserve price auctions. In these, I often make several early bids - never in too large an increment - (rather like nudging on a fruit machine!) to try and see where the reserve lies. Once established, I never bid again and just let the AS software take over.
The other exception is when I really want the object and watch the auction's end - in this case AS simply can't be contacted in the closing minutes and I then have to revert to bidding before AS places my bid. I know, I know you should make your mind up early and place the maximum bid with AS, but sometimes the stakes are too high and manual overide is necessary!
Well, what do you think?
Paul
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