Ebay sniper

[Mantis]

Hey guys,
I am looking for a free snipe bot for Ebay that works well. I have googled some, but I couldn't figure out if the snipebots are reliable or not (I'm not looking for Spyware and certainly not for a hacked Ebay account). I'm not even sure how auction snipers work, so if someone could give me some advice on this matter?

Thanks on forehand,

Mantis.

EDIT: or is auction sniping being prevented by the so called proxy bid or hidden bid?
Also, I know that this subject may be frowned upon by some, if so please explain what your objections are and I will evaluate your opinion wheter to use an auction sniper or not. I'm also just generally interested if auction sniping works or not, please not that I am an unexperienced Ebay user, but I want to gather some information before plummeting hundreds of dollars into it, making sure I get my stuff at the cheapeast price possible.

[Apollyon]

Sniping no longer works nearly as well as it used to. There's no real point in sniping any more. If you outbid their max bid, you get it. It doesn't matter if you outbid them with 6 days left or 6 minutes left.

[wiley]

I always thought sniping was primarily to prevent price wars.  Am I wrong?

I've never used a program, so I can't help you there.

[Mantis]

It still kind of works as the other bidder hasn't got time to up his bid if he still wants to, but I guess that tactic works better on one of a kind items than on Magic cards where you can just get your Underground Sea off somebody else instead.

[Anusien]

JBidWatcher.
And the idea behind sniping is not giving them time to up their max bid if they set it too low.

[Matt]

I fucking HATE getting sniped. Boo to that.

[vintagethug01]

I always bid on auctions at less than one minute; I'd rather be outbid by a watchful eye than someone who places a high bid.

[JACO]

I've tried a bunch, and the best one I've found is Auction Sentry. No spyware, reliable, easy to use, and cheap.

[Godder]

I've done a bit of sniping in my time, and it's a good money-saver if your maximum is higher than everyone else's. That said, I don't  use Ebay so much because of Trademe (NZ's own auction site - it has the distinction of being one of the few auction sites to beat Ebay in a local market), and Trademe has a feature that makes sniping largely useless (auto-extend i.e. any bid in the last 5 minutes extends the auction to 5 minutes).

[LotusHead]

What is sniping?

I don't dabble in eBay, but am curious about how it works. (I know people make bids, give/receive feedback etc).

But what is a snipe-bot? What does it do?

[Godder]

What is sniping?

I don't dabble in eBay, but am curious about how it works. (I know people make bids, give/receive feedback etc).

But what is a snipe-bot? What does it do?

Basically, it's a computer programme (there are websites available that do this as well) that stores your Ebay details, and makes a bid for you in the last seconds of an auction with computer precision for the timing of the 'raid'.

[andrewpate]

In general, "sniping" is just the act of outbidding the leader at the last second on the hopes that he/she will not be continually refreshing the auction and will not have the time to bump up the bid before you win.

[Yare]

Here's how sniping works:

Hypothetically, people will always enter their highest valuation for an item and then eBay automatically bids up items whenever multiple people bid. For example, if I'm willing to pay $10 for an item and you're willing to pay $15, if the bidding is initially at $1 and you bid your $15, eBay will bid it up to $10.50 for you. This is supposedly how nobody can game the system.

...However, people are human, obviously. So, what happens is they get outbid and go "oh, I can spend just a little bit more on this playset of Polluted Deltas" or whatever and then they bid it up just a little more. This can potentially go on for a number of rounds. Basically, by bidding very late in the auction, you prevent people from outbidding you, sometimes irrationally.

That being said, I will intentionally not put my "true" valuation on a item because I know I can always bid on another copy of it later down the line. Essentially, if I'm patient enough, I can win the item for much less than I'm actually willing to pay for it.

Summary: bidding late prevents people from (over)reacting, so you tend to get a better bargain, particularly in the long run.

See also: Wikipedia - Auction Sniping

[Smmenen]

Actually, sniping works because it obviates the bidding war, the very notion of an auction.  When you snipe at the last possible moment, the other person doesn't have a chance to respond. 

Sniping takes advantage of the way that ebay is set up, with auctions that expire at a particular time rather than at the conclusion of competitive bidding.

It would be nice if ebay added like 10 minutes to each auction with last minute bids.  I might actually suggest that to ebay.

[Ephraim]

From my understanding, eBay works exactly as it is intended to work.  At no point does eBay suggest that they wish to support rounds of competitive bidding.  They use proxy bidding for a reason; that reason is to avoid bidding wars.  I haven't done much buying through eBay, but I can confidently state that I've never been particularly agitated about getting sniped.  I put in the maximum amount that I am willing to pay and then I leave it alone.  (Yare, you suggest that by bidding lower, I might get the cards for less than the maximum I'm willing to pay -- I just factor that effect into my proxy bid.  I always bid less than I would be willing to pay if I needed the item urgently and were using "buy it now" or getting it at the card shop.)  If I don't win the item, it's because somebody else was willing to pay more for it than I was, plain and simple.  I don't care if they sniped the auction, bid with two hours to go, or already had a higher proxy bid in place than I made.

[Harlequin]

E-bay Sniping works at a psychological level.  I was listening to NPR like I do every day, and I caught wind of an interesting Econ experiment that some prof/researcher was doing.   

The Prof collected about a half dozen or so products that ranged in price from $10 to about $150.  So A bottle of wine, an electronic gadget, a Gift certificate for a free oil-change, etc.  Then he took them to a class of college students.  He had each student write down the last two digits of his or her social security number at the top of a page.  So for me, my SSN ends in 52.  The he passed the products around the room.  Each student had to consider the product and then for each product write "Yes" or "No" for if they would spend thier SSN in dollars on that product.  So for me I would write Yes if I would $52 for the item in my hands, and No if I wouldn't.  So clearly if your SSN ends with 02, you're going to say yes to everything, and if you have 95 then you will have very few "yes."

Now for round two of the experiment.  Everyone turns in the paper, and the prof holds a REAL proxy auction for the items.  He holds up the item, and then each student writes down a bid for the item.  Each student only gets 1 bid, and doesn't know anyone elses bid.  Whoever is the highest bidder must pay 50 cents more than the #2 bidder.  They really pay the money and they really take home the item. 

The results across the board is that people who had a high number in round 1, almost always across the board won the auctions.  Does this mean that the governement considers a person's propensity to spend when assigning SSNs?  No, instead it means that the psychology of how we value something has more to do with expectation and experiance than it does with supply, demand, or Utility theory. 

To bring this experiment back to Ebay, consider a bidder is about the place a bid.  According to this experiment, if they see the item is $5 they will proxy bid lower than if they see the item is $25 (even if the item retails for $50+). 

[mrieff]

I use Gixen.com, its free and works for me

[Hellsing293]

It would be nice if ebay added like 10 minutes to each auction with last minute bids.  I might actually suggest that to ebay.

And this would be important because you're definantly the first person to to suggest this.

Anyways, I know that sometimes you can find real steals on ebay, but if the bids usually get high why not just order the cards from a cheap website retailer?  I usually shop around 2-4 sites/my local cardshop to find the cheapest deals.

[Smmenen]

I submitted my suggestion to ebay.