Thread: Mythical, more powerful sniping service?

I've been noticing something strange in the past few auctions for hones that I've bid on, and I wanted to ask the smarter people here whether I am missing something. If it's what I think it is, then there is at least one person out there who has started using a program for bidding that is more powerful than existing sniping services -- a program that is apparently not being advertised or offered widely to the public.

To start with, everyone here knows what the list of bids looks like when there is one or even several snipers bidding on the item. For a simple example, where the auction ends at time T and there are two snipers (bidders 1 and 2), the final bidding will look something like this (including automatic bids):

Bidder 1 $20.61 (t-:06) winner
Bidder 2 $20.11 (t-:05)
Bidder 1 $15.50 (t-:06)
Bidder 3 $15.00 (t-1:30)
etc.

But now look at these two auctions, and you'll see right away that something screwy is going on.

Antique Barber's German Water Hone Sharpening Stone NR - eBay (item 380241923691 end time Jun-18-10 10:00:09 PDT)

Escher & Co. Water Razor Hone - eBay (item 140419415606 end time Jun-27-10 20:05:34 PDT)

To put it simply, there is a bidder in each of these auctions, identified only as n***t (659 stars), who is placing bids in the last one or two seconds of the auction that appear to be calculated based upon "sniped" bids placed in the last five or six seconds of the auction.

Now before you say it, let me just say that the bids placed by n***t in these auctions are NOT BIDS AUTOMATICALLY RAISED BY EBAY. I know what automatic bidding is, and you can see that this is not it, because the bids placed by n***t are the final, total amounts bid by him, not the amounts that are bid automatically by raising the last person's bid by $1 or $5.

Look at the bidding in the second example above. I've included the automatic bids below:

a***1 $301.87 (t-:05) winner
n***t $297.87 (t-:01)
a***1 $291.87 (t-:05)
h***c $286.87 (t-:05)
h***c $241.50 (t-:05)
n***t $239.00 (t-:06)

Now, working upwards from the bottom, you have what at the beginning looks like a typical multi-sniper situation. n***t puts in a bid six seconds before close of $239. h***c and a***1 put in bids at five seconds before close. h***c's is $286.87 and a***1's is something equal to or greater than $301.87 (we don't know the exact amount, because a***1 won the auction). So far this is completely normal sniping.

But now look at the bid that n***t made at one second before the auction closed. THIS IS NOT A BID AUTOMATICALLY RAISED BY EBAY! Instead, it's like n***t has the ability to read what the high bid is at five seconds before the auction closes and then adds $5 to that top number to come up with his highest bid, which he manages to place just one second before the auction closes.

Don't believe me? Well take a look at the second link above, and you will see the exact same thing.

Now the amazing thing here is that there is just no way to do this kind of bidding by hand. In the last few seconds of the auction, the price changes so fast that you can't even see the numbers go by that quickly, much less type them in and get them submitted within two or three seconds. A computer program could do it, of course, but if someone put together a program like this, why isn't it being advertised everywhere as a superior form of sniping program? You can see the kind of advantage that it gives you -- instead of guessing at the amount for your sniped bids, you simply instruct the computer to take the current bid, whatever it is, at t-:05 or :04 and add $5 or $10 to it. It still does not guarantee you a win, as these auctions demonstrate, but it does give you the advantage of being able to incorporate into your bid information that is gathered from other people's bids, which is what sniping programs are supposed to prevent in the first place.

So what program does this and where it is available? It's damn brilliant, if I'm making the correct inferences here, but I was hoping that someone here would have more details or could point out the flaws in my reasoning. Thanks!