proxy bidding and winning in 2003

Welcome Cyberflex.
In the hypothetical situation you mentioned, you would lose because the other bidder has a higher bid than you -- $16.00 vs your $15.00 max. It's not the last bid that wins, it's the HIGHEST bid, with any ties going to the person who bid earlier. Sniping thru AS is the same as bidding directly on eBay, the proxy system works the same.

In your hypothetical situation, if the highest PROXY bid was $10.00, AS would submit your max bid of $15.00 and eBay's proxy system would use only as much as was needed to win: $10.50.

The advantages of using AS over bidding directly on eBay are several. The main ones being: 1) not tipping your hand and showing your interest in an item; 2) being able to change your mind about your bid -- you can change the amount or cancel your snipe anytime up until 2 minutes before the close of the auction; 3) avoiding bidding wars; 4) you can set your snipe and not worry about missing the end of auction.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the knowledge I will go forth and snipify!!

The other bidder would win for $15.50, 1 bid increment above your highest bid.

See sniping is fair, the high bid wins. It's just that they dont get the second chance to bid again if you're the higest. And they may not have bid their highest becuase you were in stealth sniping mode and they didnt even know you were going to bid at all. So a bidding war never ensued.

does ebay always show the highest bid?
iE THE PROXY AMOUNT
THIS WOULD BE ON A BIDDING WAR

Ebay shows the maximum bids from all but the winner. It shows the winner's bid to the point that it was raised to win the auction (that is, the reserve, one bid increment over the next highest bidder, or the proxy amount).