I believe that an automatic extension on late bids could be a good thing. There are many time where I am bidding on several items and limit my total bids to a budget amount. As auctions end I may be more inclined to spend additional funds when I am out bid on other items. The reason that sniping is bad is that it prevents me from countering another bid with an even higher bid. There are items that I have tracked for months before I found one at a price that I was willing to pay. I have found many great deals on e-bay and in many cases pais less than 50% of the MSRP and in some cases as little as 20%. I prefer buy-it-now listings over auctions but I will bid when the price and item are right. I view e-bay much the way I would view any other form of an auction. Let people bid until the ultimate price is reached. To do anything else is to potentially cheat others buyers and the seller. I used to sell on e-bay until I was hit with a series of snipers and then I started consigning to a local hobby shop instead. The snipers lowered to ultimate final price and frustrated other buyers. When buying and selling on e-bay consider the remafications of your actions and your reaction if the situation was reversed.
Ha! Just won my first train item on Ebay!
I had a winning bid in and I got sniped literally in the last 5 seconds. Fortunately, my Max Bid was enough that it bumped me over the sniper, so I won because he couldn’t respond fast enough. It also saved me the embarrassment of having to pay more for shipping than for the item. (Wait a minute, that doesn’t sound good, or does it?)
And a “Vintage Mantua Passenger Car” sure beats Shatner’s old toupee…anyday. I suppose I could cut the wig up and use it for flock grass…
I set my top price often bid early and I am still successful enough of the time at a price that I figure is reasonable enough (usually old brass locos). Sniping is a fact of life get used to it, if it works for you fine if I get beat by a sniper so what they had to outbid me and my self imposed limit to do it, so it doesn’t matter to me if they outbid me two days ago or two seconds to go they still went more than I was willing to go.
You know what?Berk-fan284 just made an excellent point in my opinion.There’s no reason to be upset if you get outbid after bidding a fair price,or better said what you were willing to pay.The problem with some people is that they have a compulsive desire to win…at any price,so let them pay sometimes too much if they want to.
Come to think of it…is being successful at bidding worthy of being called winning?I don’t think so.In fact,all it is is business like…a seller offered a product and you made the best offer,just that simple.I don’t feel I “win” anything when I buy on Ebay.On the contrary,many times I wonder if I didn’t pay too much,but then I’m still satisfied that I bought what I wanted at a price I was willing to pay.
I use a sniper service. The reason being I have been outbid by others using a sniper service. When an item has been bid to a good price and your sitting there waiting for the item to close and your the last bidder in a day or so, then the item closes and you have been outbid by a sniper then your only recourse is to become a sniper buyer also.
Dewayne
Fellers,
I’ve been pretty happy with ebay and I agree with what everyone’s been saying. I’ll chime in anyway, though… 
After I find something that piques my interest, the first thing I check is the seller’s feedback. If he has any negatives or neutrals, I go to his list and see how far back they go and what the reasons were. If all his negatives were over a year ago and he has good feedback since, than I’ll consider it. Otherwise, it’s not worth the risk to me to bid on his items.
The next thing I do is look at the shipping and compare it to the opening bid. Many sellers out there jack up the shipping in order to pad their bottom line. It’s a fact, and i won’t play that game. If the shipping seems unreasonable, then I just move along.
Anyway, I set a maximum bid and bid early. If I get outbid, then so be it. Another item will come along, ofetn the same thing and eventually I’ll get what I was looking for at a price that I feel comfortable with. Patience is, in this case, a very real virtue, and rather than get into a bidding war with someone else, I research the MSRP and bid what I feel I’m willing to pay. Simple and effective. I either win it or I don’t.
Lastly I ALWAYS pay for items with US Postal Service Money Orders. I also require payment in them for things I sell. They cost less than a buck and are as good as cash. In fact, my own bank treats them as a cash deposit. The advantage of a USPS Money Order is that, should you be cheated by the seller, you can sic the Postal Inspectors on him. I had to resort to this once, and it was amazing how quick I got what I paid for, along with a letter of apology from ther seller. Mail Fraud is a felony, big time, and when you use a USPS Money order and mail the payment to him, you qualify for protection from the feds, regardless of the amount.
Anyway, k
I like ebay… when people “play nice”
- Bidding wars stink
- Sniping gets annoying (especially when its a continued affair… 8 items IN A ROW was my breaking point)
- people jacking up the S&H to avoid ebay costs stink
- people who don’t accept paypal won’t get my cash (regardless of how “evil” or not paypal actually is)
With that, I generally set a bid about 75% of what I’m willing to pay at first, and see where things go - if I win - great. If I get outbid, I’ll either look at something else, OR I’ll wait til there’s about 5-10 mins left on the item, and go to my absolute max. It seems to have worked for me… I recently acquired a Hudson, a Mike (both Mantua), and a Niagara (Bachmann) (all shipped) for what it’d cost to get the Niagara (sincl. shipping) @ MSRP. I figure I did pretty well with a 3 for 1 deal there[^].
Now, while they might not be “the best” lookers or runners - I like to tinker, and I’ll tinker with something until it performs at or above my expectations of it. I’ll have something in as many pieces as I can get it in within 10 minutes of opening the package… It’s a curse I tell you… but anyway, I figure if I can get them pulling (ok, well “dragging” if you want to get technical) 9 improperly weighted non-free rolling cars around… they should serve my purposes rather well when I can get around to weighting the cars properly and getting better trucks/wheels (or I’ll just need more locos… [:-^]
How can it be bad for buyers, I’ve gotten real bargins snipping.
There are definitely some people who are addicts to winning at all costs. You are right about knowing your prices and setting maximums. I’ve seen numerous items get bid to well above retail and it makes me shake my head and laugh. I’ve contimplated running out to one of the 4 hobby shops I have within 6 miles of my house… buying an item for full price (not even using my discount) and coming back and placing the item on ebay.
They should do a article on some of these complusive winners (addicts) Seen some guys with like 500 plus ebay contacts all as purchasers… get a life.
I also follow the same bidding process that Tom initially posted. I do my homework, set my MAX bid, and walk away. If I get sniped, then so be it. That only means that someone was willing to pay more for the item than I was. To me it was something that would have happened whether sniping is allowed or not. That’s the nature of an auction.
I just don’t see much advantage in sniping. To me it should not merely be a contest of who will win the auction; it should be about winning an auction without overpaying for the item. I suppose this could be accomplished through sniping, but if someone has already set their MAX bid to an appropriate level, then sniping shouldn’t do much to win the auction - unless your intent is to win at any cost.
Now shill bidding is a different story. Those people should be hunted down and shot like rabid animals.
“Those people should be hunted down and shot like rabid animals.”
ROFLMAO !!! No point in messing about; get SERIOUS !!
I’ve bought and sold a fair number of times on eBay - Trains, Cameras ( My other hobby. ), Antique China, Tupperware ( My Wife’s hobbies ) and assorted other items.
In Bidding I vary between the “Place Max Bid Now” camp and the “Snipe It At 5 Seconds” camp. If an auction ends at a time that I can easily be on-line to monitor it I will generally hold off bidding until the end of the auction. However, if the item ends at 3:13AM local time, I will go ahead and bid my maximum plus an odd amount between $.10 & $1. That way I end up with a bid of say $6.24 on an item that my Max was $6. You would be suprised how many times I’ve won on the strength of that odd cents amount.
In selling I’ve always used the USPS for shipping, unless an item was too bulky. And I always add $1 to the shipping cost to compensate for the time it takes to Pack, Label and Ship an item. I don’t believe that the $1 does anything more than partially offset the cost.
Mark Gosdin
I have about a dozen “saved searches” on eBay from which I get an e-mail every day of all new matching items. So usually, when I come across something that I really want, it’s still got about 6 days left, and I just know that the low, low price it’s starting with will be way up by the time it hits the < 1 day mark when I start deciding whether or not I want to bid. Like some others, I keep track of this stuff in my Watchlist, and I remove it when the price gets too high for me (unless I’m curious about how much a sucker is paying).
I don’t know that there’s that much different between sniping an auction and bidding in advance, at least in terms of being able to win something. Since eBay doesn’t work like a “traditional” auction, where you have to announce each higher bid, setting a max bid in advance just means that a sniper is going to have to snipe for more than that to win it. If they outbid you, it’s ok because the price is beyond your max, and if not, you win and they can’t re-bid. You might, maybe, end up paying more for the item, but you’re still going to be under your max. It may kill some of the “great deals”, but for me at least, most of the “great deals” I’m bidding on are for stuff that I don’t really need, and so I set a low bid anyway (and I still win things by “accident”).
Something I maybe should have mentioned in my previous post is that I really have three different “classes” of stuff that I watch/buy from eBay: stuff I want, stuff I need, and stuff I really, really want/need.
The first class (“stuff I want”) is mostly where I see the “great deals”. I somethings trawl through the first few pages of the HO section on eBay just to look for something that I want or could use that’s going for a ridiculously low price. Sometimes this ends up being stuff in the last minute of bidding, but it’s not really sniping (to me) since I wasn’t setting up for that for some time.
The second class (“stuff I need”) is generally for locos/shells/parts that I need to have on hand for kitbash projects (for when I get back to working on them, anyway). Sometimes it’s because I’m at a standstill, and sometimes I’m just stocking up on things for the future. This class also includes some other random stuff that’s not common, and that I might like to have. I put it into this category because the opportunity is often “use it or lose it” (or at least get stuck waiting for months). For items in this class, I generally set a max bid, and will bid near it in the last day or two, edging up toward the max if I’m outbid.
The third class is for really rare stuff that doesn’t really come up often at all. A very limited run brass model with a certain paint scheme (coughCNJ GP40Pcough) would be the sort of thing that falls into this category. I generally don’t set a definite max for stuff like this, but I know that there’s a certain amount which would just be too much, with a gray area before it. I’ll watch these items for a while, and put in bids toward the end, and depending on where the price is and how much I finally decide I actually want the thing, edge my bids up until I’m either winning or have crossed that line into “too much” territory. I imagine that there a
I agree. However, that’s not everyone does their research before bidding which usually costs them money they could have saved.
I recently bid on 12 pieces of N scale Midwest Cork Roadbed. I lost the auction to a couple of people that got into a bidding war. The roadbed went for over $12. plus $9. shipping. That’s over $21. with shipping. Discount Trains sells 12 pieces of N scale Midwest Cork Roadbed for $6.87 plus 6.95 shipping, total $13.82. That’s $7. cheaper than the person paid for it on ebay. I was disappointed that I didn’t win the auction until I saw what the winning bid was.
So many on ebay bid higher just to win an auction without researching what a new item can be purchased for online or from a local source. I lose a lot of auctions for this reason but I’m not going to pay retail for an item on ebay. That’s not what I consider a bargin.
Bill
Tom,
Think you have to add a rule to help those who bid on old Rivarossi locos. Of course I’m assuming such bidders have a shred of sanity left. They(the old R engines) run like fecal matter and aren’t heavy enough to make decent paperweights.
P.S. did you put a decoder in your NYC S1. If so, which one?
Jon
Bidding early can fuel a price war on an item. Auction bidding is as much a strategy game as anything.
If you bid early, you risk giving away to someone who doesn’t know squat what the item is really worth. Why give your competition the benefit of your knowledge?
Not all bidders on ebay are rational … sometimes when an irrational bidder sees an item has bids, they will start to “bid fish”, trying to find the upper limit of the prior bidders’ maximum price but not really willing to buy the item – it’s mostly a game for the curious. The end result is they simply drive up the price and if they end up in the lead they become a deadbeat bidder.
The moral of the story is DO NOT give away your knowledge of the item’s value nor give away your interest in the item until the latest possible moment. Snipe bidding is how you do that.
Many good sniping services exist … my favorite is AUCTIONSNIPER. If you use a sniping service you can place your maximum bid when it’s convenient and walk away from the auction. The sniping service will place your bid for you in the last few seconds.
Mathematical computer models of a second-price auction* like ebay show consistently that bidding at the latest possible moment most often gets you the item at the best possible price.
NOTE:
*In a second-price auction, high bidder wins, but the second highest bidder’s bid plus a small increment sets the price for the item.
Jon,
Yes - a Lenz LE0521W Micro Back EMF decoder. (“Micro” = N-scale)
It’s small enough that I don’t have to remove any material to fit it under the hood. Because it comes with Back EMF, the low end speed is terrific.
Tom
Looks like there was yet another bidding war over at eBay. I was watching the sale of a complete set of (12) Accurail B&O 55-ton hoppers kits. The final bid came in at $162.50, plus $7.41 for S&H. That comes out to $14.16 a car! [:O]
I’m not entirely sure if these are out of production kits. But MSRP for Accurail kits is usually $10.98.
Tom
After getting sniped 8 times in a row-might be time to start bidding on rifles. Just kidding!!! [sigh]
Jon