Who here hates on-line sellers sometimes?

[wiggyx]

His reply is total BS. He's just trying to make it sound as if it's not his fault that the transaction went to shit.

Just look at this guy. Screams total D-bag.

[xelement5x]

The problem with the Earthbound data is that for me personally, sniping on highly public auctions doesn't tend to pay off. On a copy of a Mega CD game where I'm maybe competing with <5 other people it'll work fine, on an auction where there are possibly thousands watching each copy of Earthbound it doesn't make sense to me.

Highly visibility and sought after items on eBay almost always reach the average price, sniping only works for me on less high profile stuff.

However, with a high profile item it makes sense to reach the average price, or just a bit below average, sooner rather than later to discourage people from bidding on that item. Reach the "average price" early and most bidders will just move onto the next similar listing.

For example:

Earthbound auction 1 gets bidded up to $150, and since there are always plenty of copies around people stop watching that auction and turn their attention to Earthbound auction 2 that ends 3 days later than the first. Because everyone's attention is now focused on the second auction the first one doesn't get any additional bids and ends "low" at 150.

Let say the second auction stays at around $100 up to the last day because everyone is waiting to snipe it. At the last second, everyone puts their bid in and it jumps to $180. Perfect example of sniping backfiring, but it only backfires because there are a ton of people watching the item.

Either way it's all conjecture since you can't completely understand the players for every auction, but you do the best you can based on the evidence.

tl;dr - Sniping works best (but not always) for me on a low profile item.

[JSoup]

I don't know, I've never had a problem getting something on ebay by just tossing up what I'm willing to pay and calling it a night. But, then again, I'm normally buying low profit things anyway. Editions of books for this collection, a card I'm missing from that collection. Junky stuff that you hardly find people fighting over.

[understatement]

There’s no real way to track a data point there are just too many variables. Just saying that less bids equals sniping won’t work, just because item A) has only 2 bids and item B) has 32 bids doesn’t mean item A) was sniped. Say item A) starts at $100 and item B) starts at $1, more than likely item B) will be the one targeted for sniping even if it has 25+ bids and is up to $70+ at the end.

About the only way I can see to do it would be getting two people (with money to burn) one would only snipe and the other would bid early on (like 4+ days remaining) and making a list of 100+ items both must buy within a set time. Even then people would say the pool of buyers needs to be bigger but how are you going to find that many people to buy a ton of crap they don’t want?


The more I think about this the more it sounds like it would be a great Mythbusters episode.