outbid by "hidden" bidder

The earlier bid was a proxy bid and 1 (in whatever currency) was the bid increment.

You just didn't bid enough to win.

Good luck next time.

Andrew

Maven, you were outbid, pure and simple. The other bidder's proxy bid from five days earlier was higher than your last second snipe of $82.17. You have no way of knowing how much that party actually bid, because his maxmimum bid is not shown, just the amount needed to win. He may have bid $100 or more. At that level, the bid increments are $1, so your $82.17 snipe simply raised his proxy bid of whatever amount to your bid amount, plus $1 more was enough to beat you, the second highest bidder. He still had an even higher amount, but you don't know what that was. I say this because your unusual amount (good tactic) was surpassed. Had you bid $84 and he won at $85, I would say he may have only bid $85, but given the unusual amounts, he bid more--maybe $92.34, maybe $100 even, maybe $101.28. Who knows? The only thing you DO know is that his bid was higher than your snipe.

Prior to your snipe, the amount of his bid was simply shown as $1 more than whoever the next highest bidder was. For example, if before your snipe the highest anyone else (other than the winner) bid was $61, then the high bid showed at $62 from the guy who later won. Your snipe raised that price significantly, but it still was not high enough to win.

This all points back to the same thing. Decide your max well in advance, then bid that at the very last second, through AS. If you win, great--and you will win most of the time, unless you are bidding pittances. But when you do lose, it is usually because someone else was willing to pay more than you were. As Steve says, it's not the last bid that counts, it's the highest one. We snipe because not everyone places his highest bid--most are willing to keep bidding higher and higher, and we do not give them that chance. In this particular case it did not work, but you will find that in most cases, it will!

Learn as much as you can about eBay's proxy bidding system. Read their tutorials. You already found Auction Sniper, so you will be at an advantage!

I just wanted to say that I'm delighted by the way others are chiming in. The Forum is infinitely better with a variety of points of view and ways of expressing them.

Thanks for the replies but I think you all are missing the point. When you use proxy bidding the only way to do it, as far as I know, is to first put in a bid -ANY bid, but you have to put in something, i.e. IF the auction is currently $10 and you put in $100 then in 1 plus auctions only $11 will show. Of course that bidder will win over any bid under $100 (or equal to $100). My problem here was that there was NO prior bidding by this bidder. So HOW is it possible that he was able to have a proxy bid in place???

Excuse me, maven, but in your first post you said he had put in a bid five days earlier. Now you are saying he hadn't bid before. You're right, a person who doesn't bid at all can't win...and won't show up in the bid history. But a person who shows up only once, five days prior to your bid, can indeed come back to haunt you with a higher proxy than your bid, if that one and only bid had a maximum that topped yours five days later. It just wouldn't show up as being higher than yours until your bid pushed his bid higher. That's what proxies are supposed to do.

OK, I see that my first post was not clear.
What happened was at the end of the bidding I went to see the list of people who bid on this item. On the top of the list was the winner (naturally). His bid came in at $1 above mine. My bid was the one directly below his. The time of my bid was 9 seconds before the end of the bid. The time on his WINNING bid was 5 days BEFORE mine. Now, here is where the mystery begins. HOW did he get to put in a bid higher than mine FIVE days before? He did NOT have any other bid listed so HOW is it possible that this bid was made? As you said, if he had made any type of bid during the entire bidding then he would be able to win through proxy bidding, but, I repeat, he only had ONE bid- the WINNING bid, and the time stated on the placement of that bid was 5 days before mine (i.e. 5 days before the end of the bidding).
HOW? HOW? HOW?

Apparently you don't understand how eBay treats proxy bids. The winning bidder initially put in an amount that was ultimately sufficient to overcome your snipe five days later. However, eBay only shows the amount that is sufficient to be the high bid at any given time, up to the maximum amount of a bid. Let's say that the seller's initial asking price was $10.00. The first bidder enters a bid of $100.00. EBay will show his bid as $10.00 because that's all that's needed to be the high bid at that time. Nobody else bids for five days. Then, with 9 seconds left, you come in with a bid of $90.00. Instantly, eBay compares your bid to the other guy's bid and enters enough of his hidden proxy reserve (which was $90.00) to keep him as high bidder. When the smoke clears the winning bid is $91.00 (one increment higher than your bid) and the first bidder is the winner; you're in second place. Note that you would have had to bid $102.50 to win in this example. That's how much it would have taken to overcome the initial bid of $100.00. And that's how, how, how he managed to come back from five days earlier to top your bid without having to bid again. Capice?

Maven, you are confused about how eBay's bidding system works.

There is only one type of bid. It is called proxy bidding because when you bid, the full amount is not shown, only the amount necessary to keep you as the top bidder. In the auction's bid history WHILE THE AUCTION IS IN PROGRESS, the amounts of the various bids are not shown, only the dates and times that bids were made. These, as you already know, are listed not chronologically, but in order of least to greatest. At the end of the auction, all bid amounts are revealed in the bidding history, with the exception of the winning bidder's amount, which only shows the amount he needed to win, rather than the full amount he bid.

Now, you seem to be under the impression that a person must bid more than once. Several times you refer to the winner not having put in any other bid beside his winning bid. I am not sure where you got this idea, but it is untrue. A person needs only to bid ONCE, and that is all it takes to win an auction. (That is what we, as snipers, do!) People are free to bid as many times as they like (and many so-called nibblers do precisely this, trying to nickel and dime their way to beating the current high bid.) But there is NO mandate to bid more than once--if the winner's bid was $100, made five days before the end of the auction, and none of the other seven bids are higher, then that single bid becomes the winning bid at the end of the auction. NO other bidding is necessary. Steve had tried to explain that to you.

You may ask why, then, we snipe; why don't we just bid our maximum amounts days before the auction ends? The answer is because of human nature and the typical behavioral patterns exhibited by many, if not most, eBayers, especially newbies. We avoid getting into bidding wars, where two or more folks, each with the notion that "I'm not going to let that bum take MY item from me," keeo trying to outbid each other. Such people view an auction as a card game, with the pot being raised successively higher as the game goes around the table. Those who have the guts stay in until the end, hopeful that they have the best hand, while others lose their nerve and fold. Bidding wars are gamblers trying to stick it out until the end, but meanwhile the price goes higher and higher, often far beyond the value of the item, often far beyond what the bidders had originally intended to pay. But their territorial mindset does not want to relinquish the war.

Another factor in this mindset is the desire to get the item at a "cheap" price. Because they are looking for bargain basement prices, two or more bidders may engage in the war, using very small increments. In their minds, this means they are not spending very much and can afford to make thopse bids "just a little higher." But they overlook the fact that their eight bids apiece raised the final price MUCH higher.

These folks would never just bid their full amounts at the outset. No, instead of bidding $25 for that item, they will bid $2.50, $2.75, etc. They think they are saving money, but each time their bids are answered with counterbids, they respond even higher. But, AND THIS IS CRUCIAL, if no one outbids them, they leave their lowball bids where they are. That's where we snipers come in. Without warning, we come in at the last seconds and SWOOSH the item away. Maybe the nibblers would have been willing to spend more than our snipe amounts, but since no one had bid that amount earlier, they never raised their bids. And once our snipes come in, they have no time to decide, let alone actually attempt, to place a higher bid or not.

Hopefully you now understand how the eBay proxy bidding system works and the fact that ONE winning bid is all that is required. Hopefully you also understand why we snipe.

let's see if we can try this ONE more time.
First, my credentials...
I fully understand PROXY bidding. I have been bidding on ebay for two years. I am a long time sniper. I win 75% of the time.
My "problem" with this auction is as follows.
Let's use a hypothetical case. Auction #000001 has a widget being sold. The bidding begins on July 1 1:00:00 and ends on July 5 11:59 PM. Bidder "A" bids $1 on July 1. Bidder "B" bids $10 on July 1. Proxy bidding puts in a bid for $2. Bidder "C" tries to snipe and bids $8 at 11:58:51 PM (9 seconds before the end) but he LOSES to bidder "B" whose bid comes in now at $9 with a date time of July 1. When checking the bids one would expect to see the following list:
B $9 July 1 1:02:00
C $8 July 5 11:58:51
B $2 July 1 1:02:00
A $1 July 1 1:01:00
All this is perfectly FINE.
But let's say the list of bidders is as follows:
B $3 July 1 1:02:00
C $2 July 5 11:58:51
A $1 July 1 1:01:00
Would THIS list be OK???

I'm sorry but I hit the "post" button before I was finished. I'll just continue my previous post.

... Obviously the second "list" should not be possible according to the way ebay lists the bids. The reason is that you need to put in your first bid at some time. That means that bidder "B" had to make a bid on July 1. When he did it would automatically be put in on July 1 and show up for everyone to see. He cannot "hide" his bid and have it show up only at the end of the bidding!!!

It's true that when a bid is made the username of the bidder and the date and time of his/her bid shows up immediately in the bid history. His/her actual bid does not, unless it's exactly the same as the amount needed to be high bidder at the time of the bid. Are you saying that the bidder who placed a bid five days before yours didn't show up under "Number of bids" or in the bid history at all until after you placed your bid with 9 seconds to go? That's very unlikely; I'm tempted to say that it's impossible. When did you first look at the bid history? Did you set up your snipe knowing that there was a prior bidder of record or did you think that you were the first bidder? (The item description should have contained that information. Did it show "0" opposite "Number of bids" right before your snipe was placed?)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by themaven:
Let's use a hypothetical case. Auction #000001 has a widget being sold. The bidding begins on July 1 1:00:00 and ends on July 5 11:59 PM. Bidder "A" bids $1 on July 1. Bidder "B" bids $10 on July 1. Proxy bidding puts in a bid for $2. Bidder "C" tries to snipe and bids $8 at 11:58:51 PM (9 seconds before the end) but he LOSES to bidder "B" whose bid comes in now at $9 with a date time of July 1. When checking the bids one would expect to see the following list:
B $9 July 1 1:02:00
C $8 July 5 11:58:51
B $2 July 1 1:02:00
A $1 July 1 1:01:00
All this is perfectly FINE.

[Edited] He cannot "hide" his bid and have it show up only at the end of the bidding!!!
QUOTE]


OK, now I understand where Maven is coming from. She understands the concept of proxy bidding, but she is mistaken about how it is posted.

Maven, when you bid, it only appears ONCE in the listing, NOT twice. The fact that bidder B made a bid for $9, with only $2 needed at the time to make him the high bidder, but later an even higher bid pushed it up to the full $9, does not matter. He made his $9 bid on 1 July and that is all that will show. If you had looked at the auction in progress between the time of B's bid and C's snipe near the end, you would see B listed as the high bidder for $2. (Actually you would see it at $1.25, since 25 cents is the proper bid increment for auctions in that price range.) Only the high bidder's price is listed (the amount necessary to beat the second highest bid). As Steve pointed out, no one else's amount appears until the end. BUT WHEN THAT END COMES, you will only see the one bid listed on 1 July as $9. You will NOT see it listed on 1 July for $2 and again on 1 July for $9. You will only see the $9 bid listed as such, because it was only ONE bid.

>>He cannot "hide" his bid and have it show up only at the end of the bidding!!!<<

Oh, yes he can. That is EXACTLY how eBay's proxy bid system works. You have no idea what anyone bids until the auction is over. All you know is when they bid. At the end you find out the max bids of all the losers and who the top bidder is, but you do not get to know his max. But each bid appears only once, when it is made.

Does that clear things up?

Thanks, Chatter. You put your finger right on it. The winner's winning bid was actually made five days before maven's bid was submitted, and that's why another bid by the winner isn't shown. He actually bid more than she did five days before her bid. So his original bid held up, and that's what was shown in the final standings.

Sorry, maven, I misunderstood what you were saying -- but Chatter came to the rescue.

Hm. Looks as though maven has given up on us.

Hi! I'm back (I never give up). Oh, BTW Maven is a he.
Anyway, I see what you're saying. According to what you say, had I looked at the bidding before the end (let's say 10 minutes before) I would have seen B ahead of A and the "winning" amount would be $2 from B. Then, after C snipes and B has his proxy bid put in, then C is placed second and B has his bid put in on top only.
The way to test this would be to find an opening bid of some obviously high priced item, wait until someone puts in a minimum bid, then bid let's say an extra $10 which may place that bid second (depending if the first bid did not have a higher proxy bid) and then wait for someone to bid higher and check the list and see if after every increase and automatic proxy bid if my bid shows ONCE or if my name comes up again and again after each proxy bid. I suspect it would be like you say, though it "looks" suspicious at the end when looking at the "final" list.
Now, I have another small question about something that I just noticed at an auction. It said that "user ID private" and though it says there are 28 bids it does not list any user ID for any of the bids. How does THAT happen, hmmm?
Thanks y'all.

You can test what we said until you're blue in the face, maven. Proxy bids work the way Chatter and I told you. As for "User ID Private," that's a seller's option (probably costs extra) when the seller thinks revealing his customers' identities might subject them to spamming or some other undesirable activity...I guess. You can probably find something about it in the eBay FAQs.

What is there to "test"? Ebay has been around for years and that is how proxy bidding has always worked. Simply look into any current auction that is ending in a few hours, and check back after it closes later in the day. You will see.