[R-390] R-389 Sold For $3550.00 on eBay

[James A. (Andy) Moorer]

Sure, but . . .
By sniping, you are assuming that people are going to get into an emotional
bidding war and you want to defeat that particular form of interaction.

By not sniping, you are allowing people to get into an emotional bidding
war. The only result this can have is that people will bid more than they
should.

Sniping helps keep the prices down by avoiding emotional bidding wars
(spoken by a non-sniper).

As noted, if you assume everybody is rational, then sniping and bidding your
max right up front would produce the same results. The fact that they don't
means that somebody is not bidding entirely rationally.

I personally always bid my max immediately. Sometimes I win something at the
price I want to pay. Most of the time, I don't. Who cares? One less thing I
have to find a place for.

If I really need it, I put in a "crusher" bid, although that has its
problems as well - I have had some jerk get into some competitive thing and
overbid me, then retract the bid only to put in a new bid $1 less than my
max that he discovered, just to force me to pay the max. I accused the gent
of being a "shill" bidder, which is against eBay rules, but it turned out he
was just a jerk. This has happened to me twice. Grumble.

James A. (Andy) Moorer
www.jamminpower.com

----- Original Message ----- 
>>
>> You are less likely to drive up the final price if no one knows you are
>> bidding. If you hide a 50 dollar bid with a sniper versus a proxy then
>> nobody can bid up to your max. I think that it does give you an edge.
>
> There is definitely that aspect of sniping that is advantageous for the
> bidder. However, the main reasons I use auctionsniper are two fold: 1)
> it keeps me from having to be personally at the close of every auction,
> most of which I forget until it is too late, and 2) more importantly, it
> prevents me from getting into an emotional bidding war and end up
> paying more than I would if I were thinking instead of feeling.
>