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!

I don think this is anything special. He just has his sniper set to place the bid with one or 2 seconds left.

Originally Posted by JeffE

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!

But look at the amounts he bid with 1 or 2 seconds to go -- $296.87 and $273.13. Both of these figures are NOT round numbers and happen to be EXACTLY $5 greater than the actual bid that was showing at t-:05 or :04. And as I said above, these are NOT automatically generated bids -- they are the final amounts he actually bid to win the auction.

So if these are normal sniper bids, how would you know in advance to choose these exact amounts for your sniper program to bid? Maybe it might happen randomly once, but two times, by the same bidder, within the space of a week? Not too likely, in my estimation.

Not neccessarily. He could have bid $100 higher than that, but won for $5 more.

I dont think ebay shows what the users max bid was, just the winning bid. Bidding $5 more is not really the best strategy to win, if the person you are outbidding had a max bid for more than $5 higher, you will still lose.

Originally Posted by JeffE

But look at the amounts he bid with 1 or 2 seconds to go -- $296.87 and $273.13. Both of these figures are NOT round numbers and happen to be EXACTLY $5 greater than the actual bid that was showing at t-:05 or :04. And as I said above, these are NOT automatically generated bids -- they are the final amounts he actually bid to win the auction.

So if these are normal sniper bids, how would you know in advance to choose these exact amounts for your sniper program to bid? Maybe it might happen randomly once, but two times, by the same bidder, within the space of a week? Not too likely, in my estimation.

Agreeing with the above poster. He simply sniped with the highest bid. You can't even tell if he was using software or not.

Sorry to disagree, but I'm probably just not explaining this very well.

The bidder I'm talking about in both auctions is n***t, and he did not win either one of the auctions I'm citing! That's why the bids are so unusual -- they are NOT the automatic bids generated by eBay. They are the final, chosen-in-advance, maximum bids that one would have to input into the sniping program well in advance of the auction's end. (You know that these are maximum bids and not automatic bids because they were not high enough to win either of the two auctions. The only time you get to see a bidder's maximum bid is when the bidder did not win the auction, and those the bids I'm citing here.)

Except in both cases, n***t's final, chosen-in-advance, maximum bid is exactly $5 greater than the bid that was showing at t-:05 or :04!! Think about it for a second -- either he chose these bids randomly, in advance of the auction, and just happened to bid $5 greater than the exact bid showing at t-:05 (which is ridiculously improbable), or he has a new form of sniping software.

Check out both of the auctions I've linked to and tell me what I'm missing. Thanks.

I dont see anything.. How do you know he did not input $400 as his max bid with 2 seconds left in the sniping program?

I do not see anything out of the ordinary.

Originally Posted by JeffE

Sorry to disagree, but I'm probably just not explaining this very well.

The bidder I'm talking about in both auctions is n***t, and he did not win either one of the auctions I'm citing! That's why the bids are so unusual -- they are NOT the automatic bids generated by eBay. They are the final, chosen-in-advance, maximum bids that one would have to input into the sniping program well in advance of the auction's end.

Except in both cases, n***t's final, chosen-in-advance, maximum bid is exactly $5 greater than the bid that was showing at t-:05 or :04!! Think about it for a second -- either he chose these bids randomly, in advance of the auction, and just happened to bid $5 greater than the exact bid showing at t-:05 (which is ridiculously improbable), or he has a new form of sniping software.

Check out both of the auctions I've linked to and tell me what I'm missing. Thanks.

I bid manually with 4 seconds to go, never before. Bidding before that just creates price wars and raises the final price. If I really want something for the greatest price I'm will to pay for it, I'll bid that amount. Even if I bid $100 more than the highest bid, and get it for 50¢ more than the existing high bid, you'll never know how much I bid.

Now... if I'm interested in reselling the item and making profit, then getting the item cheap is more important than getting it, so I may bid the minimum over the existing bid with 4 seconds to go. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don't. I don't use bidding software. Maybe n***t does the same.

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.

Member Id: a***1 US $301.87 Jun-27-10 20:05:29 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $296.87 Jun-27-10 20:05:33 PDT
Member Id: h***c US $286.87 Jun-27-10 20:05:29 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $239.00 Jun-27-10 20:05:28 PDT
Member Id: 2***g US $200.00 Jun-27-10 20:02:45 PDT
Member Id: i***p US $189.00 Jun-27-10 20:05:26 PDT
Member Id: 2***g US $175.00 Jun-27-10 20:02:24 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $166.00 Jun-27-10 19:43:47 PDT
Member Id: 2***g US $150.00 Jun-27-10 19:33:13 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $144.00 Jun-27-10 19:43:39 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $129.00 Jun-27-10 19:43:32 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $121.00 Jun-27-10 19:43:24 PDT
Member Id: i***p US $113.50 Jun-27-10 19:31:18 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $111.00 Jun-27-10 19:09:04 PDT
Member Id: .***_ US $110.44 Jun-27-10 19:02:37 PDT
Member Id: .***_ US $104.22 Jun-27-10 19:02:28 PDT
Member Id: 2***g US $100.00 Jun-27-10 13:38:06 PDT
Member Id: .***_ US $95.01 Jun-27-10 17:06:46 PDT
Member Id: .***_ US $91.00 Jun-27-10 13:31:10 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $90.00 Jun-27-10 13:28:34 PDT
Member Id: .***_ US $89.55 Jun-27-10 13:23:14 PDT
Member Id: n***t US $62.00 Jun-27-10 13:28:24 PDT
Member Id: o***n US $37.59 Jun-27-10 13:10:44 PDT
Member Id: 2***g US $35.00 Jun-27-10 09:05:18 PDT
Member Id: n***r US $30.00 Jun-23-10 16:01:07 PDT
Member Id: e***0 US $21.96 Jun-27-10 04:27:30 PDT
Member Id: i***a US $20.00 Jun-21-10 21:27:53 PDT
Member Id: n***r US $20.00 Jun-23-10 16:00:52 PDT
Member Id: 2***g US $15.00 Jun-23-10 13:35:02 PDT
Member Id: g***g US $12.00 Jun-21-10 21:11:33 PDT
Member Id: i***a US $10.00 Jun-21-10 00:38:33 PDT

Originally Posted by Slartibartfast

I dont see anything.. How do you know he did not input $400 as his max bid with 2 seconds left in the sniping program?

I do not see anything out of the ordinary.

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.