Why did I lose an auction to a lower bid?

quote:

I apologize if the answer is obvious, I'm a newbie to this process.

At $665, your bid had to be at least one increment of $10 above the current bid to even be placed by ebay. You might want to review this link:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bid-increments.html

AS bids as if it was you so if your snipe isn't at least one increment above the current max then it will not get placed.

Now, if there is a proxy bid in place from another ebayer and your snipe is at least one increment above the current max then you can win by just one cent/pence!

R2

One of the misleading things about eBay is that you can win by less than the increment because eBay just looks at whatever price is actually displayed.

So, here's an example:

Scenario 1: Starting price is £15

Bidder 1 places a bid of $15
Bidder 2 places a bid of $655
On ebay, current price shows as $15.50 (because bid increment is 50c on this amount on ebay.com)
Bidder 3 places a bid of $700 and wins for $665

Scenario 2: Starting price is $15

Bidder 1 places a bid of $650, price shows as $15
Bidder 2 places a bid of $660
On ebay current price now shows as $660 (bid increment is $10 on value 500 - 1000)
Bidder 3 places a bid of $669 and loses - auction is won for $660

At least that's what I think happens !!