eBay Snipers

Man, how I hate eBay snipers. You know, those guys who sit around and just wait seconds before the end of an auction before stealing something away from you.
I had a really nice acoustic guitar picked out. ...made one bid a week ago and nobody else had bid on it all week.
I was so sure I was going to get it I'd even picked out a nice place to keep it in my studio.
Two minutes before the auction is ending I'm hitting the 'refresh' button just to make sure nobody else can steal it away from me.
Right at 10 seconds before the end of the auction, I'm outbid two dollars by another guy and by the time I enter my own bid again, the auction's over.

argh.
:mad:

yea im really good at that. i just got an acoustic guitar from this dude cause i outbid him by $2 with 10 seconds left.

That stuff pisses me right off :mad: ! It's happened to me several times.

Well as a seller, sniper bids are the most infuriating things on earth.

You list a guitar and for 10 days no one is interested until the last minute. And you pay more for an item by sniper bidding!! Most people let my guitars linger at ridiculous prices like £50 for 9 days... then bid £1000 in the last minute. But because the guitar was so cheap for so long, more people add it to their watch list and intent to buy it.

If you place a big bid early is deters other people because it shows your a serious bidder and also because the guitar is bid high early, people also still expect more bids near the end so they forget about bidding and look for cheaper ones.

When you sniper bid you can only surprise the seller with a higher bid than he expected. And take it from someone whose bought about 300 guitars on ebay, the cheapest way to get them is to bid early to deters others from intending to bid, email early and ask what they want, or use the Buy IT Nows provding they are no older than 12 hours.

Did you know there was a Gibson Les Paul Class 5 on ebay, finished in spiderman iconography as part of a limited collection of only 15 which were created to mark the release of the spiderman dvds. It was mint condition, number 9 of 15, and described by Gibson themselves as possibly the most collectable gibson they have ever created!! :D

I know you guys didnt know about it!! Because I bought it within minutes of it being listed!! And guess how much for!!! A measley $2,200!!!!! Ive had offers for it equivalent to $7,000.

Thats a lesson to all you snipers out there!!!

A straight auction means you pay one incriment higher than the second highest bidder to win. You basically have to pay a value thats calculated over 7 or so days, based on about 500 peoples opinions, and arond 10 bidders opinions. Therefore you cant really get a bargain on a popular item when its a straight auction.

Unless youve spotted an obscure item that no one else with bid on, starting at 0.99p, or an item with a spelling mistake in the title, then the only way to get a bargain is Buy it Nows.

Youd have to be mad to purchase a Buy it Now when theres only a day or so remaining because the item is clearly not selling and the seller will have relisting it in his mind at perhaps a lower price. Even items that have half way through their auction time cant be all that great otherwise they would have been bought by now.

What you have to realise is the best deals on ebay are never seen, esp. Buy it Nows, becasue guys like me scour the new listings for these bargains and the Buy it Nows you see when yuo go on ebay are the ones we decided not to buy!!!

Id say I get gibsons for about 2/3 of the price they would otherwise go for buy getting good buy it nows. And things like a spiderman gibson for $2,200 are the pinnacle.

I "snipe" items all the time, sometimes it's the only way to make sure you get something at a reasonable price. It's been done to me before so I know how frustrating it is to lose something you really wanted in the last minute, but such is life. If you're the seller, you can't say you don't know how much interest is in your item because of the watch lists-- ebay shows you exactly how many people are currently watching your item at any time on the My Ebay page.

Look, I don't know if you've noticed this, but there are a lot of crazy fools with credit cards bidding on items on ebay. :) They will overpay on an item seemingly just for the hell of it, but most likely just because they either actually are crazy or just got caught up in the thrill of the auction. When I'm selling something, I count on those fools, when I'm buying something, I fear them. People that run up a bid several days before the auction ends just ruin the deals, I'd much rather they wait until near the end.

Im sorry but your just plain wrong.

Impluse buying, thats where the big bucks are spent, and people are more likely to impulse buy on an item that appears to be cheap that ends soon as opposed to an item already at a fair price with the same amount of time to go.

Idf I put a starting bid of 1250 on something i think will go for 1500, then only 10 people might watch the auction. But If I put it as a 0.99p start then 70 or 80 normally watch. So when people keep the bid low by putting stupidly low bids on the items then you get 70 odd people watching.

Another great example of how sniper bidding costs you more is tour tickets. I use them as an example because theres always multiples of them and they are all essentially identical.
What I do is bid one set up high, with my two accounts :p , to perhaps £60. Then for 10 days the tickets stay at 60 quid which everyone else watches the stupid aucitons where they are only at about £3.00 or something!! My auction ends and I get them for 60 while all the people watching the 3 quid ones suddenly have to pay way more once all the dumbass snipers come in.

I buy tonnes of guitars.

Les Paul Standards are the classic example.

All the ones that are around $800 with an hour to go, suddenly go up to $1200/1300 whereas all the ones that are already at $1,000/$1,100 usually stay at that price.

Theres always several snipers on popular items. And on unpopular items if the snipers just put their bids in early other people would snipe the auctions with less bids.

Axl, I have a problem with you calling snipers dumbasses minutes after I said I have sniped items. And, I have been registered on ebay for 7 years both buying and selling and am either selling something or watching something several days of every week, I believe I have a good idea how it trends. That said, when I list something it's almost always for a low price like 0.99 cents, precisely for the reason you mention. It gets tons of watchers, and allows a bidding frenzy to take place.

Regarding buying strategies, smart buyers know where the deals are to be had, and that goes for your items that start off high as well as the ones that start off at pennies. There might be less watchers on the $1100 items compared to the $800 soon-to-be-sniped ones, but don't think they aren't being watched.

Axel, maybe now would be a good time to reflect upon what happened last time you got into a pissing match on this forum.

Remember the rules EVERYBODY !!

This may not be fully related to the thread, but; have any of you guys ever experienced buying a defect guitar? or anything alike? My biggest fear of shopping at eBay, is that you buy somthing, and then when you get it, the neck is not straight, or it has scratches places that the seller didnt tell, or something like that.. I've never dared to buy anything from eBay yet.

Originally Posted by: SatchJrThis may not be fully related to the thread, but; have any of you guys ever experienced buying a defect guitar? or anything alike? My biggest fear of shopping at eBay, is that you buy somthing, and then when you get it, the neck is not straight, or it has scratches places that the seller didnt tell, or something like that.. I've never dared to buy anything from eBay yet.

Personally, I never buy a bass or guitar that I haven't played in person. I feel that there's too much variation in woods, finishes and quality with most instruments and would rather get something that impresses me in person.


That said, I've bought an amp and a Tech 21 Bass Compactor off of eBay and have had no trouble.

But I always go with sellers who have sold to a large number of people and have high ratings.

That seems to reduce the chance of getting boned on an auciton dramatically.

yeah i was bidding on a boss CS-2 which they dont make anymore and i was checking it for snipers for ages, i checked it the minute before it ended and it was fine, checked it 10 seconds before the end and it was fine. Waited 10 seconds only to find that some bas**rd had gotten my pedal, outbided me by £2.

Originally Posted by: Dr_simonAxel, maybe now would be a good time to reflect upon what happened last time you got into a pissing match on this forum.

Remember the rules EVERYBODY !!

*yawns* Just ban me if you want, I barely log on here anymore and despite being a member for 4 years people still cant be bothered to spell axl correctly!! :rolleyes:

Big deal I said Dumbass, the fact remains that I buy a couple of guitars a week off ebay and ones which reside nearer to their value for the duration of the auction go for less than those which the snipers keep low. Its like the snipers think by putting bids of 50 dollars or so the guitar will go unnoticed.