Thread: Mythical, more powerful sniping service?

I think it is just normal bidding. But in either case, why do you want sniping software that a loser uses?

Originally Posted by JeffE

Again, I'm not explaining this well, so please excuse the misunderstanding.

The reason you know that n***t did not snipe $400 with a time of t-:02 or :01 is because, if he did, he would have won both of these auctions, and you would see the more typical sniping pattern -- the top, winning bid is just $2.50 or $5 greater than the second highest bid, and both of these bids are placed in the last 5 to 2 seconds of the auction.

These auctions are different. Look closely, and you can see that n***t has placed bids that look like automatic raises (because they are $5 greater than the next highest bid) but are actually final, chosen-in-advance, maximum bids. And this just isn't possible with normal sniping software OR with manually entered bids.

Originally Posted by markevens

It looks to me like N***T 659 is bidding frequently. Also, ebay adjusts bids below your maximum bid. So in the example below, look at the final 3 bids. N*T probably bid $300. Ebay automatically adjusted it to $5 over the next bid, but it wasn't high enough to beat out a*1's bid. A*1 could have bid 350, but ebay simply adjusted it to 5 bucks over the next highest bid. Since N*T's bid wasn't high enough to overcome A*1's, ebay did not up his bid to 300.

That's an interesting theory -- but I researched that too, and I don't think it is correct.

If I can paraphrase, you're saying that even though his final, maximum bid is $300, eBay does not show his final, maximum bid in the bidding results because the winner's final, maximum bid was less than $5 greater, and $5 is the minimum increment at that time of the auction.

First, check out this auction, and you'll see that eBay does not work that way:

eBay.com Item Bid History

Instead, eBay's bidding results page shows the final, maximum amount bid by each losing bidder, even if the final, maximum amount bid is less than the minimum increment at the time. I agree that you never, ever get to see the winning bidder's final, maximum bid, but I think it's pretty clear that eBay displays the actual, final, maximum amount bid by each of the losing bidders, even when they are within the minimum increment amount.

And if you think about it, that makes sense too, because eBay also wants the seller to know the next highest bidder's bid in case the winning bidder does not pay or in case the seller wants to make a "second-chance" offer to the next highest bidder.

Originally Posted by Slartibartfast

I think it is just normal bidding. But in either case, why do you want sniping software that a loser uses?

Because I've only found these two auctions where n***t actually lost, and the only reason he lost is, apparently, having multiple snipers participating in the auction thows off his strategy.

But even with this complication, his program is worth using, because it allows him to incorporate into his bids some of the information that is revealed by other competitive bidders, even when those bidders are sniping.

Think about the sniping for a sec. The true advantage of it could be summed up as follows -- sniping allows you to bid on items without revealing to other bidders the information that would otherwise be available to them by seeing your bid. There's nothing magical about bidding in the last 5 or 4 seconds, and you could get the same benefit of a sniper program if you simply had the rule that everyone's bid gets submitted in secret and then gets revealed once the auction is over.

The advantage of n***t's program is that it is able to react to from bids that are submitted so late that it is supposed to be impossible to react to them. Isn't that a benefit that you would want to know about?

Anyway, I don't mean to make a mountain out of molehill, but I wish that n***t, whoever he is, would educate us about how to make bids like this. Thanks.

I don't think there's anything high tech going on.

Suppose n**t's max bid is 400 USD, ebay allows minimum increments of 5 USD.

Suppose the current bid stands at 394.59 USD. When n**t puts in a max. bid of 400 USD ebay will put n**t's max bid at 399.59. The lowest bid allowed after that is 404.59. As this is above n**t's maximum of 400 USD, 400 USD will not be shown in the bid history.

My 2 cts.

I guess you could probably use the ebay api to write program to get the current high bidder and bid $5 over that. It would be easier to just have you sniper put in your max bid at 1 or 2 seconds.

Kees, look at the auction that I've referenced in post #12 above, or look at this one:

Vintage "ESCHER" WATER Razor Sharpening Hone/ Stone - eBay (item 260595484018 end time May-08-10 13:17:34 PDT)

In either case, you'll see auctions where the minimum bid increment was $5, but the difference between the highest and next highest bids is less than $5 -- even less than $2.

What you're suggesting is a good theory, and it's what I thought was going on here too, until I looked a little deeper. The bids being submitted by n***t just can't be explained in the way that you're suggesting.

The fact that he is the ONLY ONE I can see who is bidding this way is pretty amazing too, because if this were something caused by the way that eBay records bids, you'd expect to see it in other auctions by other bidders too.

Originally Posted by Slartibartfast

I guess you could probably use the ebay api to write program to get the current high bidder and bid $5 over that. It would be easier to just have you sniper put in your max bid at 1 or 2 seconds.

Whoa, what is "the eBay api"?!? Is this some kind of programming language that you can use for eBay bidding? I'd love to learn more if you have a link you can share. Thanks!

What is the eBay API? — eBay Developers Program

Originally Posted by JeffE

Whoa, what is "the eBay api"?!? Is this some kind of programming language that you can use for eBay bidding? I'd love to learn more if you have a link you can share. Thanks!

The Ebay API they provide to developers isn't rocket science. Any programmer with a moderate skill level could easily write their own bidding software.

How fast you can submit bids is all based on your internet connection and the speed which you can communicate with Ebay. If you live close to wherever Ebay's servers are and you have a commercial super high speed internet connection (one that most programmers with the skill to write something like this are likely to have at their work) then you could easily pull off all kinds of sniping shenanigans. Obviously if you wrote something like that to succeed at sniping hones for cheap you wouldn't release it for others to use against you.

I didn't realize that there was this much software support for trading functions on eBay. I think this is what n***t is using here, and it's probably not a very difficult program to write. Just read whatever is the current auction price (say $A) at t-:05 or so, and then submit a bid at t-:01 for $A+5.

You won't win when there's multiple snipers bidding or when the high bidder isn't near his maximum, but you'd end up stealing a few auctions where another sniping program would leave you out of the running.

Still pretty clever in my estimation anyway.