Quote Originally Posted by understatement View Post
Just my option but it sounds like your stereotyping me I seem to have a pretty good understanding of how it works, sometimes as shown by the OP...



I'm not saying it's the majority but it does happen and here is the proof. I'm also not saying if the OP sniped he would have out sniped this guy but the fact is this guy sniped and won this action for $1 more than the OP but the OP was willing to pay more just didn't have time. Personally I'd rather have the chance of something like this happening with sniping than putting a big bid down from the start and having people nickle and dime it to the top.



I agree. (I consider myself the one in bold) I'll also agree that sniping doesn't translate well to big ticket items but for more mundane stuff it works quite often.
Ok, provide me one bit of evidence, not speculation, that your sniping has ever resulted in you paying less for an item than if you had bid the maximum amount you were willing to pay on day one. The point is, unless you personally know the other bidders and they told you "gee, I was really planning on bidding again, but you made your last bid too soon before the auction ended and I couldn't", there is no way you can ever know if your sniping has ever saved you a dime or if every auction you have ever bid on ended exactly where it would have if you just bid the maximum on day one. You have also just proven that what you believe is the same fallacy myself and the others saying sniping doesn't work have been talking about. The OP has zero idea how much the sniper bid. What if the sniper actually increased his bid by an increment of $50? The way Ebay works, everyone's maximum bid is kept secret. Not even the seller knows how much the bidder really bid. All anyone ever knows is who bid the most by the minimum increment needed to beat the next highest bid. If the OP had bid again, there is no guarantee he would have won or beaten the sniper's bid. In fact, it's more likely that he wouldn't have beaten the winning bidder, especially if he was just going to bid $1 more. In the end, it was his unwillingness to bid his maximum that cost him the item, not when he placed his bid.