Thread: How would you bid on this theoretical auction?

I'm with Dylan, If I know what I would pay I bid that and be done with it. But, different form him, if the shipping is overinflated that's a dealbreaker. I hate sneakiness like that. Hate it.

I have sold a few hundred items on ebay. Bicycles and parts, tobacco pipes, pocket knives and razors. I have rarely sold them with a reserve. I usually either start them at a buck or at my minimum asking price which may be high.

A good friend of mine has been selling tobacco pipes on ebay for years. He has sold thousands of them and always with a low opening bid and a reserve. Lately he includes a 'buy it now'. He has thousands of sales and many of high dollar collectibles.

He and I have debated his strategy versus mine in the past and over time his has proved superior. I remember him telling me that ebay has a lot of tire kickers and bottom feeders and listing without a reserve is foolish.

He likens ebay to a dating service. Your ad may run over and over again but eventually, assuming you've got a quality item, the 'right' person will come along and you will sell your item. In watching his auctions over the past years I have seen this philosophy proved right time and time again.

If you think someone would be a chump to pay $475 to buy an Escher, so I better list mine for a buck with no reserve, you're going to risk selling it for the $265 I paid for my last yellow/green, when you could have held out and got your price. Just IMHO.

I bid on auctions based on two principles

1. bid low-
I don't ever go much over $20, if I lose I lose...

2. bid often-
It seems like whatever razor I can't go without always shows up in some form a few days later.

I stick to this very strictly and it's paid off big time (and I've acquired many great razors of little name brand hype). The only time I violate this is when I'm looking at the "ending soonest" sorted list and I find a lot with some specific razors I'm looking for where a bidding war doesn't seem likely (no previous bids or an extremely low price with <2 mins left)

On that particular razor, I know I'd lose it unless none of you saw it... i'd put up 30 and go to bed hoping i'd wake up to a win. Call me crazy, but that's my method

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I know I'm weird, but my money my bidding rules...

Oh, that's very, very good to know! You know some day I'll test your will with say.... mint vintage cadillac starting at 59.99 and unknown reserve

Me, I like razors more than I like rules, but that's pretty obvious

All of these comments make sense to me, as I happen to follow many of them myself. I hate huge shipping charges, and I won't bid on the auction if I think the seller is trying to pull a fast one with shipping. I won't bid on reserve price auctions, because they're a waste of time. And so forth.

But could someone please tell me what is the logic of this kind of bidding (and I see it often, so excuse me if this is being done by someone on this site) -- bidding again and again and again by the same person, with each bid no more than 2 or 3 or 5 dollars over the last bid and with no intervening bidders. So you'll see this for bidding:

zzz $127.50
yyy $125
xxx $50
xxx $35
xxx $30
xxx $25
xxx $15
xxx $12
xxx $10

Note that these are NOT automatic bids, these are actual, separate bids made by xxx, each one just a few seconds or minutes after the last bid.

When I see this kind of bidding, I think that the person making the bids has no friggin understanding about eBay's automatic bidding software, but then I see that the person making the bids sometimes has 100 or more eBay transactions.

So please, someone, come to the defense of these bidders, because I want to understand what's going on, but I think the problem is that some people just don't understand how eBay works.

P.S. -- if you don't snipe, you are paying too much. No offense to Jim R and others, but even when you have a set price in your mind and no reason to go even one dollar over it, there is no reason to signal to the rest of the bidders out there that you are interested in the item and happy to have them use the remainder of the auction time to raise the price that you will be paying.

For me, take into account that I buy via last-second sniping exclusively. I decide what I want to pay, high or low, and bid only that amount on a single snipe, win or lose. That's the fun for me, the drama of a one-shot "bet." I lose all the time, but it doesn't cost me money.

A reserve doesn't deter me at all, unless the current bid is already higher than what I'm willing to pay via snipe, and the reserve still isn't met. So scenarios 3 and 4 wouldn't inhibit me from bidding.

Scenario 2 would inhibit me from bidding, because the high starting bid takes the possibility of a bargain via successful snipe right off the table from the start. I would have to want that razor a lot to bother to bid, and my snipe would be high.

Scenario 1 is the most attractive, for me as a bidder/sniper.

I don't like that particular razor - but if it were one I was after (and I only buy things that I'm really after) none of your stipulations would bother me.

I would pay whatever I had to to get it (within reason, of course).

That being said, I hate high shipping and generally won't bid if it's over $20. The reason is because shipping doesn't usually cost $20 - it costs $5 to $10 - so it looks like the seller just wants more money - in which case why not just put a reserve on it so we all know what's going on and how much they want.
If the reserve is lower than what I'm willing to pay it won't stop me. Actually, I quite like a reserve because it separates the serious from not serious bidders.
If it has a 'buy it now' and it's within my range I'll buy it now.

Basically, I don't mind spending money for something good that I want, and from my experience good things cost money. So I would rather pay $300 for exactly what I want, than $3 for something that's not quite what I want. This strategy has seen me get years, and in some cases decades of service and happy use out of some of my purchases.

Cheers,

Rob.

Edit: I'll just add a caveat - if I'm buying something for someone else the reverse is true.

Originally Posted by JeffE

But could someone please tell me what is the logic of this kind of bidding (and I see it often, so excuse me if this is being done by someone on this site) -- bidding again and again and again by the same person, with each bid no more than 2 or 3 or 5 dollars over the last bid and with no intervening bidders.

I have done that a couple of times - (I think I bid about three times before putting in a final bid). First time because I thought the other bidder was just putting in a low bid 'just in case' so I wanted to see if they were active. I reason that if someone else puts their bid up quickly they're very interested, and if they take a while (a day or two) they're not so interested.

Second time because I wasn't sure whether I wanted the item (probably bad picture or something) and wasn't ready to commit to making a decision.

I'm in the camp of the people that would figure the maximum I would pay, including shipping, then drop a bid in for that amount at the last second. I win some, I lose some but I win a lot more than I lose, especially if my bid is substantially higher than the current price of the auction. This cuts the legs out from under the 1-click bidders.

How the auction is structured is of little consequence to me, as long as the opening bid is less than what I'd be willing to pay.

I'm with FatboySlim and HNSB. I'm a last seconds sniper and if I want it I go for it. I don't care about how much the shipping is , whether the price is ridiculous ..... whatever, if I want it bad enough I'll put my max in. If I get it great .... if not, it is on to the next.