QUESTION ABOUT PROXY

so someone please correct me if im wrong but i think someone explained it right this time. so heres what happened.
i initially set a bid to go off within 2 seconds of 75 dollars
then i set another snipe to go off within 1 second for 85 dollars
then the guy beat me by a dollar

so is it a fair conclusion to say that he must have had a max bid of like 100 dollars way before and there was no one i could have known about that beforehand

is there any way to see someones max bid, besides exceeding it?

He explained it to you pretty well. No matter how much his actual bid was, eBay will only show that part of it which is enough to make him the high bidder. The rest of it was hidden in reserve, the "proxy" part. It's like money in a bank account, ready to use if you need it. If someone bids higher than the amount shown eBay will bid part or all of your hidden reserve for you, up to the maximum in your proxy account. No need for you to do anything else, although you can raise it at any time, just as your acquaintance did, by bidding a higher amount than what you originally bid.

What can you do about it? Nothing, nothing at all. Your only hope of winning the auction is to snipe-bid the absolute most you're prepared to spend and hope that it's enough to overcome his hidden reserve, or "proxy account." If your bid isn't enough, then at least you can take some comfort in knowing that somebody spent more than you would have done. And remember, there'll always be another chance at a similar item on eBay. If you wait, sooner or later another one is put up for sale.

I was reading these posts and I am still a bit confused as a newbie.

I posted a snipe with a max of $81. The high bid was $65 before my snipe hit, but reserve had not been met. The results were I was high bid at $66 but reserve was still not met. Why didn't the high bid go up to my max of $81?

Only the portion of your maximum bid necessary to outbid the previous high amount, in this case $66, will be shown by eBay. The difference of $19 is now your proxy, your hidden reserve.

Good luck!

If your proxy had been higher than the reserve, it would have been automatically jacked up at the auction close to the reserve. However, since it wasn't, it was left just high enough to outbid the previous bidder.

This is a major difference than the way Yahoo works by the way. Yahoo automatically jacks your bid up to the MAX (exposing your proxy) even if it doesn't clear the reserve.

Thanks, Ron Natalie, for following me up and adding what I should have written. I don't use Yahoo because the choices are so limited compared to eBay. Thus, I didn't know how they treat max bids. Do you mean Yahoo jacks the bids up to the max as soon as they are made, or is it only after the auction has closed?

I believe that on the last day of the auction,
Yahoo will expose your proxy to it's maximum on a reserve auction even if the proxy is not sufficient to meet the reserve. I don't like it, the poker player in me says if the seller hasn't called the bet (by letting me buy it), he don't get to see my cards (what I was willing to bid for it).

Okay, back to eBay...
Probably a newbie question that has been asked and answered ad nauseum but here it is.

scenario: item has a reserve of, say, $90.00. I put in a bid for $125, the next highest bidder has a bid of $75.00. My bid goes in at $76.00. Auction ends. RESERVE NOT MET! Yet I was ready and willing and had bid enough to kick the item out of reserve. Is that the way it works, or in this case I guess, doesn't work (for me).

Is there any recourse, for example, is the "make seller and offer" the route I have to take at that point?

Seems eBay shoots themselves in the foot in this case as, if there is only one person bidding willing to make a high enough bid to kick things out of reserve, it won't be sold.

Yes, no, maybe?

If the reserve on the item in question had really been $90, you would have won it with a bid of $125. Obviously, the reserve on the item was more than $125, in which case only the amount needed to outbid the next lower bidder by one bid increment would be shown. This is what happened in the case you cited.

There's nothing wrong or illegal with going to the seller after such an auction and saying "Hey, my max bid was $125. Would you take that much for the widget, since you didn't sell it?" However, if the seller contacts you and offers to sell the widget to you for some outlandish sum, check his auction record. I'll bet that you find he's been putting impossible-to-match reserve amounts on his stuff, waiting for the inevitable "Reserve not met," then contacting the highest bidder with an offer that's on the high side. That way he gets his real asking price and avoids paying eBay their percentage, all for the cost of a reserve bid.

blahblahblah: if your scenario was a hypothetical one, then the flaw was this. If the item has a reserve of $90, you put in a bid for $125, the next highest bidder has a bid of $75.00. Your bid will appear as $90, not $76.

If it's a real example, then Steve must be right. The reserve cannot have been $125 or less.

Steve and amh --
Thanks for the reponses. Yes, this was hypothetical, although not too different from a case I ran across. Maybe I didn't follow the process of the bidding close enough and the reserve really was higher than my bid but it didn't seem to play out quite that way. Like I say, maybe I am just plain old confused.

Anyway, I think I still need some clarification.

amh, you say that, if the reserve is the hypothetical $90 on an auction and I place a bid higher than that reserve, even though the next highest bidder is at $75, my bid will come in at the $90 reserve level, NOT just 1 buck above the other bidder? If that is the case I must have missed something in the real situation I was setting up with my example here. I thought my bid was higher than the reserve but when it finished it still sat at the 1 dollar above the next bidder.

Still a confused little puppy here.

tks all.

quote:

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Anyway, I think I still need some clarification.

amh, you say that, if the reserve is the hypothetical $90 on an auction and I place a bid higher than that reserve, even though the next highest bidder is at $75, my bid will come in at the $90 reserve level, NOT just 1 buck above the other bidder?

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Correct.

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If that is the case I must have missed something in the real situation I was setting up with my example here. I thought my bid was higher than the reserve but when it finished it still sat at the 1 dollar above the next bidder.

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Yes

All the best

Blahblahblah, to summarize, where there's an unmet reserve on an auction and you bid, one of three things will happen: (a) if your bid is lower than the proxy of another bidder, it will push the other guy's bid up to one increment above your bid or his max bid if it's less than one increment above yours; (b) if your bid is at least one increment higher than the max bid of another bidder but less than the reserve amount, the amount shown (with you as high bidder) will be one bid increment above the other bidder's max with any remaining portion of your actual bid being hidden as a proxy; (c) if your bid is high enough to satisfy the reserve then you will be shown as high bidder at the amount of the reserve and any portion of your actual bid higher than that will be hidden as your proxy. Capice?

Sorry to not reply with this sooner - not been in the ether for a while - but thanks ever so for the clarification.
Seasnon's greetings to all.