Bidding on e-Bay is a crap shoot....with the odds stacked against the casual bidder.
If you want to up your chances of winning an auction, learn how to snipe. Sniping is an online bidding website NOT associated with e-Bay. You register, buy bidding points, place a bid and choose when you want the bid placed on an auction and wait. No one knows you're going to bid on the item. The seller doesn't know you're interested, either unless you put it in your watched file. At the proper time, the snipe website places your bid for you. You don't need to be watching when the auction ends. Your computer doesn't even need to be turned on! If you lose, there's no charge; if you win, the charge is minimal (like 1 cent per dollar valuation).
You can win more frequently with sniping, but you have to do your homework. Know what the item is worth. Research what similar items have sold for. Look at the bids on auctions that are about to end to see what others have bid. If the price is already too rich for you, don't bother. Another will be along soon. Develop patience! I waited two years to get my N scale Rivarossi Big Boy for under $200 when most of them were selling for over $300. Patience paid off. Wanting an item badly can cost you money! If you can't walk away from an overpriced auction, you probably should avoid auctions altogether! LOL
You won't always win. Why? Because there's ALWAYS somebody willing to pay more than you AND many of those bidders use sniping to get what they want.
I recently watched an auction languish for 6 days with only two bids on it - my 99 cent bid and the guy who originally outbid me by a nickel. No action for 6 days. I put a snipe bid on it, bidding a little higher than what I would have wanted to pay but not more than I was willing to pay. I set my snipe for 1 second before auction close. The bidding closed at $15 and I won. LOTS of bidding activity at the end, but my slightly overbid pricing won out.
On another auction a few weeks ago, I lost out when the snipe bidding went completely ridiculous. I happened to be watching the auction at the end and was sure I was going to win. The high bid of $105 was days old and my last second snipe bid was for $135. With seconds to go, I was sure I would win. BANG! End of auction and the final bid was almost $180! I was out-sniped by another sniper, all withing ONE SECOND of auction close! Can't win 'em all!
I see a lot of auctions that have no activity for days, then the bidding gets fast and furious when all the snipe bids hit in the last few seconds. That's why it's important to be realistic with your bidding.
Speaking of realistic, I will never understand the bidding mentality of some buyers. An item is listed with a low starting price. With 7 days until auction end, you'd think that anyone interested would just watch the auction, not jump into the bidding process. Yet I often see two or more buyers bidding each other up, often beyond the real value of the item, and with several days still left in the auction. It's like someone is saying "I MUST be the top bidder! I MUST! I MUST!" What a nimrod! You only have the high bid UNTIL SOMEONE ELSE OUTBIDS YOU! And they'll outbid you for the minimum bid increase, be it a nickle, a quarter, a dollar or whatever. They'll outbid you for cheap money. And if you MUST be the high bidder, you'll end up bidding again and again and again, just to see your name on the top of the list. Then you'll get sniped at the end of the auction and lose anyway! When I'm the seller, you can bet I'm sitting back, watching the idiot bidding and clapping my hands with joy!
As a buyer, I almost never bid on an item that already has a bid on it. I'll open the auction bidding occassionally, but I won't bid again until the end, and then I snipe it if there's been no idiot bidding.
I win far more than I lose and I win at a price that I'm completely content with. When I lose, I lose, and no regrets. Someone was willing to pay more, that's all.
So if you want to increase your chances of winning on e-Bay, start sniping.
Darrell, quiet...for now
