I was tired of losing my bids on a particular clock, and there was one piece closing tonight that was reasonably priced ($40, which was the reserve price, others had been going for $60 or so). So about 25 minutes before closing, I signed up for Auction Sniper, submitting a price of $50.05, to bid 5 seconds before closing, as recomemnded. I was a bit apprehensive about this because I didn't fully trust AS, and wanted to make sure that I got a bit in before it closed since the price was so low. So about 4 minutes before closing, I put in a bid of $41 just to see if the other guy had bid higher than $40. I was immediately outbid, but my system took a couple of minutes just to get the bid entered to ebay so by the time I got the outbid notice on my screen and resubmit, it was too late to do so. I went back to the AS window and no longer saw my pending snipe so I was optimistic, and fortunately, AS did bid as I had told it to, and my $50.05 price beat another last minute (1 minute before closing) bid of $49.56. If not for AS, I never would have won with the slowness of my system at the time (although I guess I probably would have bid $50 initially, but it would have been too soon and the $49.56 guy probably could have come back and outbid me again.
Needless to say, I am thrilled! I'm generally not a big fan of sniping (having been sniped a few times), but if everyone else is doing it and this is the only way I'm going to stand a chance of winning, I might as well do it, too.
Bil
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