I suppose I'm being a bit rash but it's better to be a pessimist and to create a plan for all the contingencies rather than being an optimist and merely hoping for the best.
I always appreciate symmetry and it seems that I went off in several tangents but somehow found myself back to the original question and purpose of this thread. So from my understanding, if I bid manually before my snipe is sent, nothing different from my manually setting a new bid will happen? That is, it'll be just what would happen if I bid back to back?
So... I bid $4333.55 at 10 seconds. My snipe is set to $4444.66 at 7 seconds. The only thing that happens is I increase my maximum bid to $4444.66 and ebay will automatically, incrementally go back and forth between all the bidders, until the highest bid is reached.
Highest Bid: $2000
Me: @10 seconds $4333.55.
@7 seconds--snipe-- $4444.66
Highest Bid: $2000+Increment = $2100
Bidder 2: @6 seconds $3000
EBAY--processing-- Bidder2+Increment<My max bid...Bidder2+Increment<My max bid etc. etc. until Me:$3000+Increment > Bidder 2.
@6 seconds: You have outbid bidder 2!
@5..4..3..2..1...
You have won a heart transplant!
@0 In a fury of excitement, I suffer from a stroke.