Sniping Does Not Require Justification!

The problem as I see it (also a sniper here) is that you give people ample opportunity to bid big on an item if you bid early, thus driving the price up. You can certainly place a well-intended early bid that is in-the-money (and I have in the past), but that doesn't preclude the possibility of people who are not well-intentioned bidding up an item they had no intention of buying, whether they be an agent working on behalf of the buyer or otherwise. The other case is that people hardly ever use the proxy format of the eBay bidding process even if they bid early. They either don't trust it or don't understand it. I don't trust it personally, not because it's technically flawed, but because of the interaction of other bidders. In practice it seems that people make incremental "max" bids up to their REAL maximum (because most people understand the incremental bidding process used in live auctions), rather than placing their ultimate maximum bid right at the beginning. If you bid late, you are more likely to get the item that you want at a lesser price, simply because you significantly reduce the possibility of shill bidders or subsequent bids at the end. I don't really understand the strategy behind placing an early bid. I might well be willing to pay up to $200 for a particular item, but I'd much rather pay $50 if I can get away with it. :) If you're placing a well-intentioned max bid at the end of the auction or the beginning, the most you're willing to pay is still the same, isn't it? The only cases I can think of that it works in your favor to bid early really is if you place a bid and someone places an identical bid (assuming no subsequent bids) you are the high bidder, and the other is if you're not around to watch the end of the auction. If eBay was more like a single sealed bid that's tabulated at the end of the auction, I think it'd be a better system. The system that's in place now encourages nickel and dime bidding. Or, "man, this thing is going too cheap... hey Bob... bid $150 on this auction for me." A real auction you can see who you're bidding against, in eBay it's hard to do. ________________________________ From: Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com> To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tue, February 8, 2011 2:29:45 PM Subject: Re: Sniping Does Not Require Justification! On 2/8/2011 12:38 PM, Tony Duell wrote: This is not a function of sniping. If the $20 bidder was an early bidder, you still would have won at the same amount. By definition, assuming snipers would have bid either way, sniping cannot push prices up more than early bidding. If every sniped bidder bid early, either the item sells for the maximum bid placed during round 1, or someone puts in a round 2-n higher maximum bid. Thus, as the time to place 2-n round bids approaches 0 (the snipe), the maximum bid settles on the maximum of round 1 bidders amounts. Jim