Why people bid (sometimes heavily) on eBay at the start of an auction and then 6 days pass before the auction concludes and goes nuts as expected in the final seconds?

 

Sometimes they bid so that the seller won't get disheartened by a perceived absence of interest and end the listing.
Sometimes they are shill bidders who are friends of the seller or the seller under a different ID.
Sometimes they have a similar item(s) and want to boost the perceived value.
Sometimes they are a bit lacking in the intelligence department.

 

Sometimes they just want to scare away the lowballers and nibblers.

 

Aren't 4 and 5 the same thing?

 

I am not a regular eBay bidder but the few times I have bid on something I have put a high bid in to see If there is much interest in the item. I am aware that it is the last minute/seconds of an auction that count but I don't want to continue to follow an item if my bid has been bettered after 3 days of a 6 day auction.

 

Bidding your maximum early on would make sense if all other bidders decided on their maximum and stuck to it. However, consider these two situations.
1) You put in an early bid. Your competition thinks, Help! someone has gone in high already, that means it's definitely correct / worth more than I thought. They rethink their maximum and you will have to pay more to get it.
2) You outbid the first bidder, they realise they are not going to get the item cheap after all, and that they actually want it quite badly. They rethink their maximum....etc.
This doesn't matter to those who don't care how much they pay, but it does matter to me and that's why I don't make a habit of bidding early.

 

I think people will pay what they want to pay. Collectors know roughly what a watch is worth. I imagine that very few watches sell below their market value and very few watches slip under the radar.

 

Rookie eBay move maybe? New to eBay bidders?

 

For me, sniping is the best strategy. I'm of the opinion that many buyers don't really know what they are willing to pay and will put in increasing bids until they are winning, then stop. Outbidding them just gives them a chance to reconsider and bid more. I've used a sniping service, www.ezsniper.com, for more than 10 years with great success; it's reliable and inexpensive.

 

I will bid the starting price on an item with 0 bids, which makes it more difficult for the seller to remove. I will also bid a nominal amount at the beginning because I prefer to be bidding on an item than putting it on my watch list, as there have been many times that my watch list has not notified me properly.

But I will certainly not be putting my max bid in until at least 1 minute prior to the end of the auction.