Proxy bidding

All ebay bids (unless at the minimum increment above the current bid level) are automatically proxy bids. That includes AS bids.

Bid what you want to pay and eBay will initially bid only at the lowest level necessary to be the high bid. This is a simplistic statement, but see for more detail http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/proxy-bidding.html and http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/e_item1.html (How do I place a proxy bid? It looks like I can only place a maximum bid).

Ya, a proxy bid just means putting in your max on eBay.

Of course that is bad since it works against you. You tip off other bidders and your highest bid is entered at that time. There could be days left inthe auction and plenty of time for other bidders to enter their max and get into a bidding war with you.

Sniping is the way to go, when you get proxy outbid it just means that someone that entered their bid on eBay directly bid higher than you did and was willing to pay more.

Hang in there and you'll win more than your share this way.

Thank you

Something I haven't seen mentioned are "bid retractions". In the stone age when I used proxy bids, I had some auctions where someone would expose my high bid, then retract their bid claiming that their underage child had placed the bid. I reported them to eBay, but nothing ever seems to happen to them. I've seen buyers with several bid retractions. It appears that eBay lets most of these slide. Anyway, this is another reason to use AS.