[78-L] bidding

[Michael Biel]

DAVID BURNHAM wrote:
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> e-sniping or whatever it's called is hardest on the sellers. ...  These sniping bids usually come in within the last 5 seconds.  Hence I've substantially stopped buying on e-bay and I see many items of value being purchased at the minimum bid in the last seconds. ... Although it's a risky business, I have also bid an item up just to give the seller a chance to recoup something approaching the value of the item. 
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There have been many times where either my daughter or I have seen nice 
items with a low minimum bid, often 99 cents, just sitting there with 
one bid, and we say "I'll be damned if I let this guy get this for just 
99 cents" -- and we put in a snipe for maybe three oir four bucks.  
Sometimes we get it for $1.04, other times we get it for $2.00, but many 
times we make the guy pay fifty cents above our three or four dollar 
bid.  Thus we HAVE helped the dealer, and gotten the price of a good 
item into a more reasonable range.


>  Of course, it's fun seeing something of mediocre value suddenly shoot up to a hundred dollars or more as two snipers take each other on.
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I do know to be careful and not overbid on a snipe in the hopes I will 
get it for less.  But there is an item on the Nauction I really want and 
I am considering overbidding on it with the hopes of getting it for 
less, but it is something I've lost out on before, and I hope everybody 
ELSE who has wanted it has already gotten it! 

There is an ebay DVD dealer who has a system of one cent DVDs.  He 
always has a thousand or so DVDs going up continually for one cent.  
That's the first words in each description.  But if you look at the sold 
pages, practically none ever get sold for one cent.  They usually go for 
$1.50 to $5.  Maybe one in one hundred are unsold or go for one to five 
cents.  There are always at least a second bid, and rarely was the first 
bid just one cent.  On records (and DVDs) at 99 cents, often the first 
bid is 99 cents.  There's just some psychology going on.  Leah gets a 
lot of DVDs at $1.04, but never at six cents!  (She was lucky at getting 
cheap obsolete HD-DVDs to get some of that format for her $25 HD-DVD 
player.  She takes after her old man in being interested in obsolete 
formats.) 

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com