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| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
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Make the world a better place, dismember a Democrat.
An entirely separate issue is sellers submitting a ghost bid when they feel the item is going for too low a price. They will still be stuck with the eBay fees, though.
You also draw attention to the auction by bidding early, which may make the final price higher. Especially in test equipment, there are some pretty hot properties that don't attract a lot of bids. Last year, I got an HP 35665A dynamic signal analyzer, in perfect shape, with almost all the options, for $330. Best bargain since I bought my wife's wedding ring. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
email: hobbs (atsign) electrooptical (period) net
http://electrooptical.net
You never know how much the high bidder has bid. In the last remaining minites I will try a low bid or two and see if I can locate the highest bid. Then in the last minite I go for the max I would want to pay. In the case of really wanting something, you start to sweat.
I won a 1966 Datsun 1600 a couple weeks ago. My new toy.
You sometimes do know. If the winning bid is less than the minimum bid increment above the 2nd highest bidder then what you see is the actual amount that was bid by the high bidder.
The bids you see are not the amounts that people have bid!
At any time, the highest bid you see is the *second* highest bid plus the bid increment [*]. At the end of the auction, the winning bid is also the *second* highest bid plus the bid increment.
Consequently, you cannot reach any conclusion about the actual highest bid by watching the bids come and go.
As others have pointed out, your optimum strategy is to decide the highest amount you're willing to pay, and then bid that amount close to the end of the auction. The amount you actually have to pay will again be the *second* highest bid plus the bid increment. This will be the same as your bid only in the case where the *second* highest bid was just a bit less than your bid.
In particular, there is nothing to be gained by making multiple bids. You should bid only once. If you still think it makes sense to bid more than once, then you still don't understand the process.
[*] Not strictly true, because there is an uninteresting edge case where the highest bid is higher than the second highest bid, but by less than the bid increment.
This is true. A bidder has to weight this possibility against the possibility that an earlier bid gives others (who are not bidding optimally) a chance to rethink their bids.
The usual stragegy for dealing with this is to bid a whole number of dollars plus a random number oc cents. It doesn't eliminate the possibility of an identitical bid, but it does reduce the probability.
Of course, it slightly goes against the philosophy of bidding the highest one's willing to pay (which is theoretically an immutable amount of money), but thw pilosophy can probably tolerate modification to this extent.
The biggest trick is to win by bidding 1 cent more than the second highest bidder. I achieved that only once.
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Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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Rich Grise expounded in news: snipped-for-privacy@example.net:
..
Yes, on some things, that is the only way to get a deal. Everyone tends to get greedy and do the wait-and-see, even on hot items. But this never works-
As soon as one bid is made, the buy-it-now option is gone. And then by the end of the auction, the price soars way past the buy-it-now price. Nobody but the seller wins that one.
Decide what it is worth to you and then make a choice.
I've bought a few things with the buy-it-now that were a give-away compared to similar finished auctions (you can also look at selling history with completed auctions). I often wondered to myself at the seller's wisdom in this.
I sometimes bid on things just to see how cheap I can get them. I was working with 100 watt LED modules and bought a couple at $3 or so. Then I thought I would bid on some auctions to see how much they go for. I ended up buying another five or so because I put in the opening bid of $1 and no one else bid! I got a battery charger, stepup converter for $0.50 the same way after paying $2.50 each for a couple.
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Rick C
Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998
One day many years ago, I manually sniped and bought something on ebay. Another bidder was using some sniping software but must have had badly set allowances for network delays set in his software or something. He contacted me afterwards and he was really really angry because I bought the item for less than the limit he set in the sniping software. He thought it was somehow unfair or impossible that his sniping software didn't beat me. He was also very upset that I didn't want to sell the item to him, not even for more than I had paid. Heh, if he really wanted it then he could have placed his highest bid early.
Doesn't that require you handing over your user ID and password to them? If so, do you think they can be trusted?
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