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There are two questions here :-

AS will attempt to place the bid regardless of the identity of the current high bidder. The only thing that should stop the bid being placed is that it is below the minimum bid Ebay will accept for the item - which is the current price plus the increment.

A second bid can raise the price of an item even if you are the high bidder, but only by up to one bid increment. And this only happens if you are the currently high bidder but your first bid is less than an increment higher than another bidder.

It's really very simple - bid once - bid as close to the end as you can - bid the maximum you want to pay. Don't think about the difference between your maximum and the price you win at for individual items. After a few auctions you will find that sometimes you get pushed all the way to your max, sometime you loose - but it was more than your max and sometimes you wim below your max - but you never pay too much (assuming you know what you are buying).

And the net difference between the sum of your maxima and the sum of your winnings is your profit.

John.

John SL
Thanks Puppy Raiser,

But I made a mistake - there is another case where a second bid will raise the price if you are the high bidder.

If you are the high bidder, but your first bid was below the reserve then you sit as the high bidder and if nothing else happens the auction will close and you will not win because the reserve was not met. But if you place a second bid which is at or above the reserve then you remain the high bidder, but the current price is raised to the reserve price.

This can be a bit disconcerting if you are winning at item at $5 but below the reserve and snipe it at $300 and win it at $300 which turns out to be the reserve and nobody else bid at all - but I guess that that just means the seller and I agree on the value of the item - could be both wrong, of course.

Which, of course, breaks my first rule 'bid once' - I used to have to do this occasionally as a way of watching more than 20 items (yes, I know it's now 30 but it used to be 20), because my sniping tool was based on my home machine and if I saw an item when browsing ebay away from home and wanted to watch it I had to choose an item from my full watch list and bid on it to allow me to take it off the watch list as there is a separate 'items you are bidding on' list - which has no limit.

And there is an Edit button - thanks.

John SL
Last edited {1}

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