Ok who sniped me!!

Regardless of the fact that I'm into props, that is the most appalling thing I have heard today. Those are some miserable human beings.

Probably the same way camera collectors felt/feel when a $15 part they used to buy easily was driven into the $100+ range by 'us'... They probably find it appalling that 'we' inflated the market and outbid them...
 
I bid on props and vintage movie posters on ebay all the time (and win more often than otherwise). I only snipe, 4 seconds before the buzzer, via Auction Sentry Deluxe. Sniping is the only way to go, given ebay's rules which are more like a game of Beat The Clock than a real live auction. There are online sniping services that work just as well as Auction Sentry but they're more cumbersome to use if you place a lot of bids on a regular basis. Also, they require you to give your ebay password to a third party, which I don't want to do. The only problem with Auction Sentry is that if your computer crashes while you're not home, your snipe won't be placed. So you need to make sure the machine you're bidding from is very stable.
 
I don't snipe out of principle but I also don't gripe about sniping. I put in the maximum I'd pay for an item and wait.
Its always funny when people whine about snipers, if you get bent out of shape because someone got it for a 1.50 more than your max bid then you should have bid 1.50 more. I mean thats the whole idea behind ebay right?
 
Ah, photo equipment collector...

I went on that Graflex afficionado site once, and it was scary. Some of those people are as crazy as some of us! :lol I've heard of some actually going out of their way to outbid Star Wars fans for Graflex flashes (sometimes paying a lot more than the item's worth. They justify it by saying that at least they're keeping it out of the hands of the likes of us), and also sometimes purchasing our converted-to-lightsaber-already flashes in hopes of rescuing them from their terrible fate as a prop replica :lol

When I first stared looking for these about 10 years ago, i spoke to a camera shop owner (the guy was in his 70's) and he told me they used to throw these away by the boxful in the 80's. Nobody wanted them.

Now, we are "destroying them". What a bunch of knuckleheads.
 
Honestly I think if you bid less than 5 minutes before the auction ends all you do is drive the price up. SOmeone dod that on a Batarang I was bidding on. THe 1st auction went for $30 which was more than I was willing to spend.

THe next auction some stooge bid it up to $40 3 hours before it ended and lost anyway....
 
If I want something, I sit up and wait for it and snipe at the last seconds... I always go x.x1 with all bids, as someone with an earlier similar bid will win if I went with a full dollar or usual cent amounts. This way I can win it cheaper and just fractions above number 2.

Bitching about being sniped... what's next... bitching about being the first bidder with days to go and then being outbid? Jeeez.

When I first stared looking for these about 10 years ago, i spoke to a camera shop owner (the guy was in his 70's) and he told me they used to throw these away by the boxful in the 80's. Nobody wanted them.

Now, we are "destroying them". What a bunch of knuckleheads.
What kind of comment is that? As with anything, collectors arise when stuff are getting scarcer. When there's plenty of something, people don't really notice or get the urge to go collect it.

The shop owner was a salesman, not a collector.

I see no problem with camera equipment collectors outbidding prop collectors - at least, they are saving the piece in its true form for posterity.
 
I see no problem with camera equipment collectors outbidding prop collectors - at least, they are saving the piece in its true form for posterity.
True. I have the same feelings for MGC model guns too - especially after I learned how scarce they are becoming.

That said, getting sniped does suck - even though it's a part of the eBay experience.:)
 
It isn't hard to beat sniping software (and I have). Sniping software can only recycle within a finite amount of time after a bid...
 
It isn't hard to beat sniping software (and I have). Sniping software can only recycle within a finite amount of time after a bid...

No it isn't hard to beat them, just bid higher, the highest bid wins, regardless... The idea behind sniping is to limit the available reaction time for people to second guess themselves and up their bid amount before the auction closes... If like most sniping software it snipes at 3-5 seconds left or so, that only give you 3-5 seconds to realize another bid came through and get your new higher bid into the system, not impossible but very impracticable for sure...
 
Just figure out the maximum you want to pay for it and then bid it, i'll never understand this tiny-increment snipe bidding. Maybe it's some super genious eBay tactic and I am just a noob, but it seems a little redundant to me.
 
No it isn't hard to beat them, just bid higher, the highest bid wins, regardless... The idea behind sniping is to limit the available reaction time for people to second guess themselves and up their bid amount before the auction closes... If like most sniping software it snipes at 3-5 seconds left or so, that only give you 3-5 seconds to realize another bid came through and get your new higher bid into the system, not impossible but very impracticable for sure...

Nailed it. That is key to me and why sniping software is a good thing. It isn't that I mind losing to someone who simply outbid me but I don't want to offer another bidder the opportunity to second guess themselves on their initial bid and come back to bid higher. That is why I use a snipe service.
 
I snipe- but I do it myself. I don't snipe in tiny increments, however I might give myself juuuuuust enough time to place one more bid if I want something badly enough.

Otherwise I bid what I'm willing to pay- if I'm outbid it was never meant to be.


For people who poo poo sniping saying you should just bid your maximum regardless of how much time is left (such as a couple of days) think of this-

It gives little (if any) time for a shill bidder to jack up the price.

Kevin
 
what i don't understand is why the auction ended .05 after the time it was supposed to end. to be fair, i think it should have ended at .00
 
i'll never understand this tiny-increment snipe bidding.

Ebay does that automatically, they bump your bid in steps...

Example opening bid is $1, you bid $1000, Ebay will only bid $1 on your behalf until someone outbids you say for $2 then Ebay will automatically up your bid to something like $2.10, if someone else bids $50, Ebay will move you up to $51 and so on until you reach your limit... The max bid you put in is not what you will pay unless someone else pushes you there...

When I REALLY want something on Ebay I have been known to snipe for 2-3 times the market value, so for example yeah you might have lost to me for $101 when you had bid $100, and then complain about losing for $1 but you didn't lose for $1, you really lost by over $200 as it would have taken a $301 bid to beat me, it just wasn't reflected in the winning bid...

I snipe for the plain simple reason that the 'king of the hill' driving up the bid games are just totally unproductive to the buyers (great for the seller) who cares that you are not the top bidder yesterday or the day before (some do obviously, as I see them claim the top spot within hours of being outbid with 7 days still left in an auction) I'm a buyer and want the item I don't want to play games, thus last second bid for my max amount I will pay, win some lose some...
 
what i don't understand is why the auction ended .05 after the time it was supposed to end. to be fair, i think it should have ended at .00
Ebay uses a large server farm the 500ms is probably factored in as a latency delay between the servers...

Meaning that if you bid in with 0.01 seconds on left on the clock on the server you were connected too it takes into account that it takes a few 100 milliseconds for that server to populate your bid through the whole server network... And before you think that isn't important strike up a conversation with any serious online gamer, millisecond latency delays are a big problem for some...
 
Sorry, I love it when people get sniped.

If you REALLY wanted it, you'd have bid more.

Don't blame the sniper just 'cause he was smarter than you.

I wasn't blaming the sniper, I just wanted to know if it was one of you guys.
And he didn't out smart me... ...he just has a bigger wallet:lol.
 
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