eBay and sniping

[markmacmonkey]

Mother hubbards! :evil: Okay... I don't know if this sniping thing I have seen mentioned around Retrobike is an 'honest' way of getting the items you want but I keep losing out to people by nowt (1 euro tonight!) I could weep! :cry:

Can anyone tell me how this sniping works? What you need etc... I'm a Mac user (obviously) so is it a bit of software or a service. Please bare in mind that I am not a 'techie' but an artistic kind of person!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thx!

 

[tintin40]

I'm a Mac user too. Try these Gixen.com or auctionsniper.com
Gixen is free auctionsniper is free for the first 3 goes
Happy bidding

 

[markmacmonkey]

Ah-ha! Now I get it! Right... what am I watching!

Thanks tintin40! Much appreciated!

 

[Kestonian]

I've used Gixen, too, to great effect!

Anyway, sniping is a way of submitting your bid in the last moments of the auction.

It's useful in a number of ways
- you don't reveal your hand too early in the auction (my Uncle is a world renowned collector of some quite boutique pottery items and found that whenever he placed a bid on something it would signify to others that it was worth going for)
- you can bid even when the auction ends at an inconvenient time
- there is a CHANCE that people won't have time to place a bid after yours has been submitted
- you can submit your maximum and not get trigger happy at the last second when bidding manually, and pay over the odds for something
- you can submit a low bid for something you don't "need" and forget about it. Then if you win, you've got a bargain. If you don't, it doesn't matter

BUT
- you have to reveal your ebay id / password to the sniping service so they can submit your bid on your behalf (I've not had a problem, but it's worth changing your password frequently just to be safe)
- understand the way bidding works on ebay first. The highest bid you see is not necessarily the winner's maximum price. The items you lost out by 1 euro only went at that price because the auction winning price is the SECOND highest bid, plus the increment at that price. So if you bid £25 and had the second highest bid, it would sell at £26 but the winner's MAXIMUM bid might have been £40 so even if you had bid £38 you'd still have lost it.

Sniping's great. I use it a lot to set the price I'm prepared to pay for something then walk away. If I don't get it, I didn't want it badly enough.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[markmacmonkey]

Kestonian... many thanks to you also! I certainly get the gist of things now!

I love this place... full of gentlemen (and ladies of course !) not to mention scholars!

 

[tintin40]

Kestonian i see you have a 2007 moots :shock: How about some pictures?

 

[Kestonian]

I do indeed ... I keep meaning to take some, but she's filthy!

 

[tintin40]

Thats the best time to take pictures

 

[kingroon]

I'm an AuctionSniper user and living on the FlipSide means that alot of the Ebay Exotica ends whilst I am deep in REM.. Perfecto for that..

 

[cyfa2809]

Seems nothing has changed then!