Thread: how do you win

Tried buying my first razor Boker King Cutter NOS

1 second left and I get outbid by a dollar... I had a feeling I wasn't going to get it at 66, so I made another bid for 96 just in case and then a person that I always see winning auctions that I try to bid on got it

How do you snipe on Ebay? Maybe next time I see a decent razor I'll just put my max bid as $200, I doubt it will go that high.

I only win when I use "buy it now", when I snipe for a high amount (I use http://www.gixen.com), or when nobody else notices the auction I bid low on

Originally Posted by Baited

Maybe next time I see a decent razor I'll just put my max bid as $200, I doubt it will go that high.

Unless someone else does the same thing. It happens.

Bid the amount you are willing to pay, as late as you can, then let the automatic proxy bidding process do its stuff.

You can snipe by manually placing your bid in the last few seconds, or there are online services to do it for you (e.g. Gixen.) Sniping either way protects you from shill bidders and people who bump their bids up a little at a time.

I pick a price I'm willing to pay and shove it in the online snipe thang, if it goes too high I don't worry about it. I like finding auctions with only a couple of hours to go, so I don't spend a week working up how much I really need/want it.

I use a program to snipe.

Another way to win is to do a little research on the lesser known, or less popular, brands and bid on those. I am not talking Zeepks or anything like that, but bidding on W&B meatchoppers, or DDs etc can only end in pain unless you are prepared to pay the price, or get lucky.

This of course assumes that you are only after a good shaver, and not trying to deliberately obtain a popular razor.

James.

Originally Posted by Baited

Tried buying my first razor Boker King Cutter NOS

1 second left and I get outbid by a dollar... I had a feeling I wasn't going to get it at 66, so I made another bid for 96 just in case and then a person that I always see winning auctions that I try to bid on got it

How do you snipe on Ebay? Maybe next time I see a decent razor I'll just put my max bid as $200, I doubt it will go that high.

Sniping doesn't help you win. All other factors being equal, sniping actually slightly reduces your chances of winning, because for equivalent bids ebay gives precedence to the earliest bidder.

When you were outbid on that King Cutter, you lost because somebody else was willing to pay more. Once you're willing to pay enough to win (or more accurately once you start telling ebay you're willing to pay enough to win), then you will win, it's as simple as that.

Just don't be foolish about it. If you put in an absurdly high bid thinking it guarantees a win (a) if you're lucky you're wrong and (b) if you're unlucky you may wind up paying that absurdly high amount. There was an auction a few weeks ago where a guy put in a $1000 bid on a Dubl Duck to guarantee a win, and some other guy fumblefingered entering a $400 bid, typing an extra zero so it went in as $4000. Both bidders and the seller were quite surprised.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

Another way to win is to do a little research on the lesser known, or less popular, brands and bid on those. I am not talking Zeepks or anything like that, but bidding on W&B meatchoppers, or DDs etc can only end in pain unless you are prepared to pay the price, or get lucky.

Entirely correct, someone recently drew attention to ERN's, but there are others.

I have a couple of searches I use.

a) I search by city where quality vintage razors were made like solinger, solingen, sheffield, hamburg, hamberg, essen, creusot, frankfurt, cologne, and others.

b) common brands (but not overpriced). This one has enough brands I had to split it into 3 searches.

Between these I come across some good razors that aren't commonly thought of for purchase.

The city or country search tip is a good one.

You might target razors made in the USA, except Case because of collectors. They tend to be off the radar except for a few of us that know how good they really shave.

Yeah, definitely be careful if you start to enter wayy high bids on items just to "guarantee" the win. More than a couple times people have paid way too much for items because someone else either pushed their bids up, or just had the same idea.

People don't always win because someone was willing to pay more. I'd say more often it's because someone else didn't have any more chances to one up them. I know for me, it's nearly impossible for me to know my _true_ maximum before seeing some other bids coming in. Losing in an auction is a great motivator for me to re-evaluate my maximum for the item. If I get sniped, I don't have this chance to re-evaluate. The problem is that it's really never the case of "I only have EXACTLY $XXX." There's always some wiggle room there, which is why it stings when you're outbid by a dollar. I suppose I could just bid my _true_ maximum, the amount in my bank account, every time I bid, but of course that isn't practical.