On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Peter Smith wrote:
> Yes I missed it, Chris Brogden advised a $30-$40 value. I bid $35 and
> it went in the last few minutes for $39. Is this common on Ebay -
> there seemed to be a flurry of bids in the dying seconds. Do people
> sit and watch these items until the last minute - is there an art to
> bidding?
Definitely. It's usually a good idea to bid your maximum amount right
away and let eBay use proxy bidding to bid it up rather than palce a large
number of small bids. It's easy to get carried away and spend more than
you planned if you're putting in a lot of bids, so bid your maximum. If
you get it, great, but if someone outbids you, then they just
overpaid, at least as far as you're concerned.
The question of when to bid your maximum is pretty open. Mafud advocates
bidding early in the auction, possibly to scare away anyone who sees that
you must have a high bid. The downside is that this method gives other
buyers lots of time to decide that they want it more than you, since
they're seeing that it's attracting interest. I prefer to bid at the end
of the auction, which ensures that you have not contributed to the bidding
war or encouraged anyone to bid more than *they* wanted to when they saw
your high, early bid. The downside of my method is that you have to time
it just right. Too early and you give someone time to outbid you; too
late and you miss the end of the auction. I've done both. When it works,
however, it's the cheapest way of getting an item, short of an outrageous
buy-it-now price.
chris
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