I know Sundays and Monday evenings are busy for eBay. When are the slow periods? Saturday night? Early Thursday morning? I'd like to know when I can feel at ease with a very small snipe interval (<5sec).
thanks in advance!
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I haven't been registered that long either but I've found that 5-8 secs works most times and 10-12 secs on Sunday. I wasn't comfortable either until I saw most of my snipes comming in. The ones I lost were too low anyway. In fact, this AM, another (apparent?) AS sniper and I bid at the EXACT time but my bid was higher, how's that for a koinky dinky? 
I'd go with go get 'um's advice, other than I'd be a "little" more conservative on Sundays. eBay has been very good these last 3 Sunday's, BUT!
I wouldn't ever "feel at ease" using a lead time of less than 5 seconds. I guess it depends on how much you want the item. If you're not worried about winning (hate that word) a particular auction, use less than 5 seconds. There are posts from others that say they have no problem using less than 5 seconds, but my nerves aren't strong enough to do that.
Consider this: It's really hard for a manual sniper to respond to a 5, or even a 8 second snipe (counting the addition seconds sometime added by AS due to delays from ebay).
More to your question: ebay has unpredictable hardening of the arteries during periods that aren't high traffic times (once on a Tuesday at 9 AM).
I wouldn't ever "feel at ease" using a lead time of less than 5 seconds. I guess it depends on how much you want the item. If you're not worried about winning (hate that word) a particular auction, use less than 5 seconds. There are posts from others that say they have no problem using less than 5 seconds, but my nerves aren't strong enough to do that.
Consider this: It's really hard for a manual sniper to respond to a 5, or even a 8 second snipe (counting the addition seconds sometime added by AS due to delays from ebay).
More to your question: ebay has unpredictable hardening of the arteries during periods that aren't high traffic times (once on a Tuesday at 9 AM).