can you figure this?

Atdruc wrote, "The winner bid the $10 increment at he odd .90 amount HOURS BEFORE my AS bid."

No, he didn't. The odd amount was triggered by your own later bid. The winner's proxy amount was an indefinite higher than your bid and eBay used only the part of it that was needed to top your bid by the bid increment, $10.

Check the time stamps. His bid went in about 7 1/2 hours before my bid. Yet, the auction showed no bids placed until nearly the end of the auction. Ebay would not have "held" a proxy bid, right? is there other software that "holds" a proxy bid, without having it show as a bid on ebay?

Would love to have someone clear the confusion, but look at the time stamps. thanks

one more odd thing. There were three lower bids that came, apparently, AFTER the higher winning bid. Ebay would not accept or post bids that came in lower AFTER the high bid. This is very strange

Using your own schedule of events, the bid history prior to auction closing would have shown first:

joeythird(6) [some amount] Oct-17-02 14:25:20 PDT

Then sme500 came in and the history looked like:

joeythird(6)[some amount]Oct-17-02 14:25:20 PDT
sme500(586) [some amount] Oct-17-02 21:59:08 PDT
sme500(586) [some amount] Oct-17-02 21:58:45 PDT
sme500(586) [some amount] Oct-17-02 20:57:27 PDT

Then you came in and it looked like:

joeythird(6) [some amount] Oct-17-02 14:25:20 PDT
atdruc(8) [some amount] Oct-17-02 21:59:55 PDT
sme500(586) [some amount] Oct-17-02 21:59:08 PDT
sme500(586) [some amount] Oct-17-02 21:58:45 PDT
sme500(586) [some amount] Oct-17-02 20:57:27 PDT

Joeythird stayed on top because the bid he placed at 14:25:20 was higher than any of the bids that followed, and eBay used his proxy amount to keep him on top. Yes, eBay holds any unused portion of a bid in reserve and uses it to keep the bidder ahead of subsequent bids until his maximum is exceeded or the auction ends. This is how a bid placed more than 7 hours before yours can stay as high bid regardless of four subsequent bids. Let's say joeythird's max bid was $600.00. The eBay account would have shown (if dollar amounts were to appear in the bid history):

joeythird(6) $465.00 Oct-17-02 14:25:20 PDT
sme500(586) $455.00 Oct-17-02 20:57:27 PDT

Then

joeythird(6) $516.00 Oct-17-02 14:25:20 PDT
sme500(586) $506.00 Oct-17-02 21:58:45 PDT
sme500(586) $455.00 Oct-17-02 20:57:27 PDT

Then

joeythird(6) $547.00 Oct-17-02 14:25:20 PDT
sme500(586) $537.00 Oct-17-02 21:59:08 PDT
sme500(586) $506.00 Oct-17-02 21:58:45 PDT
sme500(586) $455.00 Oct-17-02 20:57:27 PDT

And finally

joeythird(6) $587.90 Oct-17-02 14:25:20 PDT
atdruc(8) $577.90 Oct-17-02 21:59:55 PDT
sme500(586) $537.00 Oct-17-02 21:59:08 PDT
sme500(586) $506.00 Oct-17-02 21:58:45 PDT
sme500(586) $455.00 Oct-17-02 20:57:27 PDT

Joeythird still had $12.10 left in his proxy account. Does that make it clearer?

Bid histories are often tricky to decipher but I believe Steve is correct.

On the bright side at least your snipe bid made them pay another $30-40 than they would have if you didn't bid. Probably not much consolation but there is no telling what their true high bid was. Hopefully much higher than yours so you wont think about it much.

Remember, bid amounts are NOT visible until the auction is over. And eBay clearly states in the bid history that the bids are listed "highest bids first". They do not list them in chronological order. The highest bid will ALWAYS be the top bid in the history history, regardless of when it was placed.

By the way, Steve. It's nice to see you're back and on-line.

Thanks, star_trkr. It's good to be back.

steve, thnaks for the clarification. The one remaining question is why Joey's bid did not show up until after the auction ended.

What do you mean by "didn't show up"? He should have appeared as the high bidder but with a lower "high bid". If he didn't appear at all, then something was wrong, probably with your own monitoring of the auction.

You're right, amh, Joeythird should appear somewhere else in the bid history with a lower amount, since his bid preceded all the others in the example. What's the auction number? Let's have a look-see.