bid not placed

[Bluefintuna]

I've just tried mirror for my second time but my bid , which would have won, wasn't placed. Both servers were set at 3 secs. Any idea why it failed ?
item number 293437863455

[Bluefintuna]

So I think I've figured it out. Bid was at 2050 until 7 secs to go. That bidder had yesterday placed a max of 2285. With 7 secs to go someonelse bid 2235 so although that bid didnt show in live time bidding was then at 2285. My snipe was for 2326.
I see the item has bid increments of 50 so I assume thats why my bid wasnt placed.

Question is whats really the point of sniping rather than simply placing my max bid days before ?

[Rickajho]

Well first, no matter how you place a bid highest money is always going to win.

One point of sniping is to not drive up prices in a bidding frenzy. Placing early proxy bids on the eBay site is what sets up a bidding competition, many times driving the bids well beyond the value of the item. In effect, what becomes more important is winning the auction for the sake of winning, not the actual item itself up for auction.

That, and you don't know what the other bidders did or would have done. If you were satisfied the value of the item was 2326 what would you have done if the person who won had an outstanding proxy bid for 2800? 4500? 9900? You can never know that when bidding so you set your snipe for what you think the item is worth, not for what you think it may take to outbid everyone else no matter what, just because you can.

Rick

[Cupid]

This is also an example where a larger offset might have been better, 10 seconds before the auction end a bid of 2326 would have been accepted, at just 3 seconds it was too late as the bid of 2235 had been placed by then.

It's certainly why I prefer larger offsets, because it happens reasonably often on auctions where there are other snipers and fairly close agreement on the value of the item, as it would appear there was in this case.

The car would have sold for more than it did.. but, as Rick says, there is no guarantee it would have been for less than 2326 because we will never know what that high proxy bid actually was... It is a little bit more upsetting to see something sell for less than you were willing to pay though, as opposed to knowing that someone else was prepared to pay more than you were, and your actions made sure that they actually did.
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Mark

[Gixen]