Sunday auctions

The best way to increase your probably of winning an item is to place an exorbitant proxy bid (say 3 or 4 times what it's worth). That won't guarantee that someone else won't outbid you (or that you won't be nibbled, shilled or bid-retracted), but it's about the best way that I know of to get those "I *REALLY* want" items.

If, on the other hand you don't own Microsoft, you could consider placing a reasonable proxy bid, and hope you don't get outbidded, nibbled, shilled or bid-retracted.

A third option is sniping. You've read about Sunday evenings. Lead times can be very critical then. Nothing is perfect. On some Sunday's AS doesn't place a few auctions successfully, but does place a whole bunch successfully even using 5 seconds. AS can't just tack on 30 seconds to everyone's bid, because others would complain about placing the bid too early.

Even if only 5 or 10 out of a 1,000 aren't placed, on a must-have even that risk may not be acceptable to you.

I would suggest a compromise. Place your snipe with 30 to 45 seconds. If during the last 30 to 45 seconds of your auction ebay is running smoothly, then someone may make a retaliatory snipe. Maybe even two. But I think that most snipes are automated, so what ever lead time you used, you'd be snipe.

I would also add, that unless this is a one-of-a-kind item, it's bound to show up again, and you'll probably get it cheaper. When I first started on ebay, I was very pre-occupied about winning each auction. Had I been more "rational" and "patient" I would have waited until the item re-appeared and saved a bunch of money.

There are no guarantees. The call is yours. Like to hear how it goes, and GOOD LUCK - IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE.

I wouldnt suggest *only* manually sniping the item, but if you are going to be around set a snipe and do a manual one yourself.

Yes, Sundays are the worst day and about 1% will miss. However I'd be willing to be that probably 5-10% of manual snipers miss. The reason being is that they arent able to measure and antipate eBay slow downs like we are since we're contactly placing snipes all day. If eBay is running 15 seconds slow and they're going to try a 10 second snipe then they'll certainly lose the item because their bid wont make it in time, whereas our site will adjust and place your snipe early so that it makes it to eBay.

We actually made some pretty nice improvements about 2 Sundays ago and the past 2 sundays have been the best in quite a while.

If your item is ending on exactly the hour make sure to use a lead time of about 30 seconds.

Hi,
You are worried about other snipers, so bid to discourage them. You can do this by driving the current price as high as you can during the auction. Snipers are less likely to bother to prepare snipes on items that already have high prices. If they do make snipes, they are likely to take more risks by leaving them very late. In fact the final price may actually be lower on items that have high prices a day before auction end.

A good strategy is to aim to keep being the high bidder, but in a series of moderate jumps, like $20, $50, $100. That way you encourage other early bidders to compete, without revealing the maximum price you are prepared to pay. At the end you can try to stay as high bidder all the time, but finish with a manual snipe slightly lower than your automated snipe.

This is also a good way to make sellers like you, in case you need favours. This bidding style seems much more generous than it really is.

In response to Rosetsu's post:

That system, while it might contain some [perhaps weird] logic and might even work on items that come up frequently on eBay, wouldn't really work for rare or one of a kind things. Frankly it sounds extremely complicated and time consuming.

If I really want something, and it is a rare piece, I am never discouraged by price...so I would still snipe it at my absolute maximum bid. So I think that all your system might accomplish is just artifically driving the price up.

Again, I think it is not a bad idea for items that are on eBay all the time as folks tend to pass by the slightly higher auctions to move on to the lower/newer ones and never look back.

Always good to hear another point of view...but I don't think I would buy into it. Are you sure you're not a sniper hating seller on eBay. Just teasin'!!

WarriorNun

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning"