How is this Possible?

That person may have put the item in sniper just as you did, only a day earlier.

Tiffany

quote:

yet they were never the leading bidder

Not true.

Full bid history
When bzoljan placed their bid, theyaks00 was high bidder with his AU $60 bid. bzoljan’s bid forced the price to $61 (theyaks00’s $60 + $1 increment). The price stayed at $61 for around 14 and a half hours, then imonkey97 placed a $70 bid, followed by another $75 bid. An hour later theyaks00 nibble-bid 4 times. When your snipe went in, the current price was $96 (theyaks00’s $95 + $1 increment due to bzoljan’s proxy bid). As bzoljan's "Date of bid" shows, his bid was placed 16 hours before the end of the auction.

This is a very common point of confusion among newbies, and appears quite regularly in this forum. Remember that eBay lists the bids in order of amount, and NOT chronologically. This tends to confuse people who, despite realizing this fact, still tend to want to see bids chronologically in their heads. (I know that I do.)

The short answer is that the winning bidder DID place the bid days before, and it WAS listed at the time, but since the amount shown was not higher than your own planned snipe, you did not notice it. Now before you insist otherwise, as a newbie please understand that we get this same question all the time, and some newbies will SWEAR that the winning bid absolutely, positively was NOT there beforehand. But I can assure you that it was; you simply did not notice it because the amount was not higher than your own planned snipe. The higher amount was not revealed until your snipe raised the existing high bid. Remember that the winning bid only shows once, at the time it was made, but its amount will change, depending on the other bidders.

I would ask anyone who would still swear up and down that the bid was there, exactly what amount the high bid was showing at whatever point in the auction they claim it was there, by whom, and at what time. Of course, they generally cannot answer these questions, so their claims end up being groundless.

In any event, good luck with future snipes.

Yep - read up on PROXY BIDDING on eBay's Help Screens. You were beaten by a higher proxy bid placed a day earlier.

AS doesn't guarantee a win, it just avoids bidding wars. It's not the last bid that wins, it's the highest. Oh, and don't eat yellow snow!

R2

Thanks for info, I actually contacted bzoljan just after to find out how he/she did it, as you said they placed and automatic bid of $250 a day before it finished. so I had no chance of winning the item anyway even with the snipe I'll have to read up on how this is done so I'm better prepared next time.
cheers again for the run down.

As far as info about sniping, take a look at this: http://www.auctionsniper.com/TipsSheet.aspx