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On-line auction bidding strategy help needed…

M'Bob
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There’s a really nice gold Constellation up for auction ending soon. The current bid is $5,500, estimate between $4-8K.

My question is: what is the rationale for early bidding? What does that accomplish, except maybe to weed out those who were looking to bid low, but then they wouldn’t have won anyway. Thanks for any insights.
 
Waltesefalcon
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To scare folks off. Guys, like me, are less likely to follow an auction if it's close to our max bid with a week to go vs an hour to go.
 
calalum
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I feel like early bidders see something they find attractive and just toss in a bid, without really understanding how a lot of online auctions work. More savvy folk likely wait until the waning minutes before making the harder decisions.
 
cristos71
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Set up a snipe and forget about it is my tactic if an Ebay auction.

If it's one of those horrible online auctions where when you bid in the last minutes the countdown clock is extended by x minutes then I generally can't be bothered as it irritates me too much and my golden hobby rule is that it has to remain fun!
 
sheepdoll
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I often forget to bid, so I will enter a placeholder bid.

Really hate that ebay has a bid timer. Liked the silent auctions the club had where a whistle was blown near the end of the mart. Got some good deals that way.

Would have been better had they done live auctions from the start. Of course in person one often felt the back wall was bidding to keep extending things. It was also sometimes easy to figure out who the dealer networks were.

Basic trick to auctions. Pick a limit and stick to it like glue.
 
lejaune
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cristos71 cristos71
Set up a snipe and forget about it is my tactic if an Ebay auction.

If it's one of those horrible online auctions where when you bid in the last minutes the countdown clock is extended by x minutes then I generally can't be bothered as it irritates me too much and my golden hobby rule is that it has to remain fun!
There used to be sniping tools either as browser extensions or stand-alone software that do the bidding on your behalf at set time prior to the end of auction, usually a few seconds before. None of these seem work anymore. If anyone knows of any working sniping tools, I will be interested.
 
Emeister
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M'Bob M'Bob
My question is: what is the rationale for early bidding?
Some auctions have increasing bid increments the higher the bidding goes.
This seems counter productive to me as it's the complete opposite of house auctions that I see on TV; where the auctioneer starts decreasing the increments as they get closer to the hammer in an attempt to maximise the sale price achieved.
I'm guessing that in a multi-lot auction time is more precious than those final few dollars.

I have, in the past, put in an early bid if I feel like my limit is where these increments start becoming prohibitive, hoping that my early bid catches that 'golden spot'.
In reality, the bidding process wasn't transparent enough for me so I reverted to last minute bidding.
 
Tony C.
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lejaune lejaune
None of these seem work anymore. If anyone knows of any working sniping tools, I will be interested.
I've never had a problem with eSnipe, though I am not very active these days. Won an auction a couple of months ago using their software.
 
M'Bob
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I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but nonetheless: if you can’t wait until the end of an on-line auction to put in your top bid, and you do it in advance, and your bid is competitive relative to the expected hammer price, what prevents the auction house from bidding up to, and just under your bid, to insure a higher result?
 
cristos71
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lejaune lejaune
There used to be sniping tools either as browser extensions or stand-alone software that do the bidding on your behalf at set time prior to the end of auction, usually a few seconds before. None of these seem work anymore. If anyone knows of any working sniping tools, I will be interested.

I use Gixen.
 
Tony C.
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M'Bob M'Bob
what prevents the auction house from bidding up to, and just under your bid, to insure a higher result?
The knowledge that their business would implode if such actions were ever to be exposed?
 
Evitzee
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M'Bob M'Bob
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but nonetheless: if you can’t wait until the end of an on-line auction to put in your top bid, and you do it in advance, and your bid is competitive relative to the expected hammer price, what prevents the auction house from bidding up to, and just under your bid, to insure a higher result?
Other than it is illegal to do that these days, nothing prevents them. That's called 'bidding off the chandelier'. In a live auction it is difficult to catch, but with online bidding there are those pesky digital records to worry about.
 
dsio
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cristos71 cristos71
Set up a snipe and forget about it is my tactic if an Ebay auction.

If it's one of those horrible online auctions where when you bid in the last minutes the countdown clock is extended by x minutes then I generally can't be bothered as it irritates me too much and my golden hobby rule is that it has to remain fun!
eBay's testing automatic extensions on some auctions at the moment to counter that with the intention of applying that trial across the site if successful. Rather frustratingly those sites make countless millions taking away the small commissions sites like this one would otherwise get on listings and periodically they're involved in security breaches as well so I'm not a big fan of them in general and rather hoping eBay's counter sniping approach will be successful.
 
cristos71
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dsio dsio
eBay's testing automatic extensions on some auctions at the moment to counter that with the intention of applying that trial across the site if successful. Rather frustratingly those sites make countless millions taking away the small commissions sites like this one would otherwise get on listings and periodically they're involved in security breaches as well so I'm not a big fan of them in general and rather hoping eBay's counter sniping approach will be successful.

I'm looking at it purely from the perspective of a watch collector looking for a good deal, why show my hand early? Not to mention the convenience factor of the fire and forget approach.

So if this gets rolled out across all Ebay auctions that would pretty much kill it for me as time/reward ratio will be even further diluted than it is now...and tbh these days there's hardly anything worth bidding on Ebay anyway.
 
Dan S
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There's not much of an advantage in bidding early. However, on a few occasions, I have lost a watch because of a technical glitch in the bidding platform at the last minute, or because I thought I was approved to bid and I wasn't.
 
Davidt
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Dan S Dan S
There's not much of an advantage in bidding early. However, on a few occasions, I have lost a watch because of a technical glitch in the bidding platform at the last minute, or because I thought I was approved to bid and I wasn't.

This.

I sometimes throw an early bid in to make sure my registration is in or they’ll ship to the UK. Then I usually bid in the last few seconds.

However, I’ve never registered for any snipe software so I do occasionally bid early and forget about it as I don’t want to always be bothered by bid reminders in the last few mins that might interrupt what I’m a doing, I might miss the reminder or more frequently, a reminder comes up and I think “great, I’ll bud in ten mins” then I forget altogether and get pissed when it sells several hundred under what I would have bid.
Edited:
 
gatorcpa
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cristos71 cristos71
I use Gixen.
So do I, but Gixen only works with eBay.

I think the auction in question here is on another platform.

If eBay adopts their experimental auction end push-back for watches, then my buying days will likely come to an end.
gatorcpa
 
lejaune
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Thanks for the info on sniping sites. I was actually looking for apps or browser extensions that can work independently on my own machine rather than a service of some web operators. I used to use Bid-O-Matic for many years, but due to Ebay's frequent change of their API, allegedly to counter buyer's sniping, the developer of this software finally gave up and stopped update. I may try the Gixen since it's free if you use it 4 times or less a month, and I don't use much at all.
 
The Father
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Done several dozen auctions, I settle on my top number that item is worth to me. Watch last hour of auction, if past my number I am done. Otherwise make bid at last half hour and let ride. That way the last second button push “glitch” doesn’t rear its ugly head.
 
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