A Golden Opportunity!

prevent

These could also be sellers who are trying to buy at well below market prices and then resell the items.

There is also another factor on Ebay, the 'buy it now' option. The seller can put a cap on the price which allows the bidder to instantly win the auction. Some sellers set the buy it now price so close to the minimum bid that it's not worth bidding on and waiting for the auction to end.

Like I said, a fool and his money are soon parted.

AE6EO

The way to stop sniping is to always have to type in a "displayed" number in order to bid. This displayed" number would be like the bitmapped numbers on some security systems where a slightly squewed picture of a number is displayed for verification.

That would only stop computerized sniping. I (and many others) keep my local clock within a second of NIST time, and check it against eBay's clock before sniping manually.

"Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark Remover"" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Precisely. And since eBay is not the same as any traditional kind of auction, we shouldn't assume that it's the best way to do auctions. Keep thinking about better ways to run an auction.

Over at Astromart, they run auctions like eBay (i.e., proxy bidding) but the auction is automatically extended a few minutes as long as the bids are going up at a certain minimum rate. There are those who complained that this "takes the fun out of sniping" but we think it makes a better, fairer auction.

"Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark Remover"" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

That could work, but it would appeal even more to people who enjoy sniping as a game of chance, rather than people who want an auction as an efficient market.

It couldn't push it very far. There would have to be some consideration of all the bids submitted by the same person... i.e., you can't submit a thousand bids each 0.01% higher than the previous one.

Actually there are already minimum bid increments. You can't bid at all unless you are willing to beat the current high bid by a certain (small) percentage. This is to keep from having a hundred bids that are 1 cent apart.

Hi Norman,

If you want to post the #'s here, I will take a crack at some value guestimates. I have been watch>

Some general comments on Ebay and Sniping:

1. Since more people have started using automated bidding/sniping services, I would say that items are going for less than what they used to. This is just a general feeling and observation. I can't back it up with evidence. It also could be because there are many more sellers and more items up for sale on Ebay now or because of the economy.

1. Most of the time, people end up paying too much for items on Ebay because of auction fever. Most of the time, you can get what you are bidding on somewhere else cheaper.

2. I have seen buyers pay more than the Walmart price for common items (Like a Nintendo 64) just because they were buying it on Ebay. For example I saw a buyer pay 0.00 when you could buy the same unit for .00 brand new at Walmart.

1. People have the idea that because they are purchasing the item on Ebay, it has to be a bargain. Most do not factor in shipping into the equasion.

2. I have had great success by searching for items where the seller did not describe them properly or use proper keywords in the title. Less bidders find the item so it ends up going for a much lower price. You can do this by browsing every single item in the categories you are interested in. Since many sellers use gallery pictures, it is pretty easy to find something that is listed wrong / with the wrong keywords in the title.

This has been tried on many smaller auction sites, but I don't think you can draw any conclusions about how it would work on eBay. The sniping phenomenon did not really emerge until eBay reached a certain (large) size. I think that if eBay adopted auction extension rules, software would be developed to manipulate them, and auction patterns would change in an unpredictable way.

Yup.

There have been many different styles of auctions run, through the past centuries. They aren't, I think, hard-and-fast discrete models - they are points in a fairly complex continuum of rules and limitations, which share similarities and have differences.

Yankee, Dutch, open-bid, sealed-bid, eBay... there's no "one true way" to run an auction. Every style has benefits and disadvantages to the various parties involved. Given that peoples' interests are fundamentally opposed there's not going to be a single style which is "best" for everyone.

eBay's style is eBay's style. The fact that it doesn't map exactly onto any of the historically-popular meatspace auction styles does not make it any less legitimate, or any more (or less) "right" or "wrong".

It is what it is. The nature of any game is defined by its rules.

Just as in a real live auction. You don't know what my maximum is, do you ?

So I should tell you up front, OK, let's bid, but I'll tell you right now that I'm not going over $xxx anyway ?

It's easy. Each succsessfull bud adds 5-10 minutes to the end time. Just as in any real live auction. The auctioner always waits until there is no more bids. If I'm overbid, I'm always given the oportunity to re-bid. This whould make sure the all eBay auctions *always* are won by the one willing to pay the most !

And the snipers are toasted...

Jan-Erik.

"Any", not "many". There have been (and, I believe, still are) quite a few real-life "live" auctions which have fixed closing times.

Again, not "always" - just "usually".

This could be done. However, it leaves the auctions open to another form of problem - indeterminate closing times. You could end up with an auction being stretched out for many hours, with each participant "raising" the other by only the minimum each time a few seconds before the auction is due to close.

... or the one who is the least exhausted. Snipers might still be able to win an advantage over live "real-time" bidders, by just outlasting them... wait until 20 seconds before the five-minute extension runs out, then raise the bid by a minimum increment. Lather, rinse, repeat. Pretty easily done using automated tools.

This style of auction certainly reduces the advantage that snipers have. However, it could tend to increase the amount of time and attention that a bidder would have to pay to any given auction, since they wouldn't know in advance when the auction would close. If this makes the bidding experience more frustrating for the buyers, it could work against eBay's best interests. Similarly, if this approach results in higher overall winning bids than eBay's, it might be more attractive to sellers but less attractive to buyers.

I'll be interested to see whether those eBay competitors who use an open-bid, open-ended-time auction process end up being able to convince people that this is a "better" system for the buyers (or the sellers) than eBay's particular option model.

Well, my guess is that you will pretty fast reach whatever the bidders find to be their maximum anyway. And since you know up front, that you can not "snipe" anymore, you could just bid days in advance. So many auction could have there bidding settled long before the time runs out. Who knows...

Hm, *I* have been pretty frustrated when beeing outbid and *not* beeing able to reply with a higher bid...

Agree.

Jan-Erik.

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Sniping might be fun, but it doesn't prevent a buyer from winning a bid.

And the big, big problem is that almost everything is up for auction on Ebay. And almost nothing at other auctions.

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That's the exact point I was tryi8ng to make in my other followup to this thread.

Of course you can always try to not play by the rules...

AE6EO

While I'm not defending GoldenO since I don't like his terms any more than you do, he is running an eBay Store so you should expect to see him to re-list his "inventory". I usually don't see much of his stuff unless I select "See additional Buy It Now items from eBay Store sellers" so I see the eBay Store Buy-it-Now items. As you pointed out, being able to exclude specific sellers is a very nice feature, particulary when you have no intention of buying from them under any circumstances. That eBay included it is a bit suprising since eBay usually caters more to the sellers since they really pay for the service.

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Oh, really? I'd say that without buyers, both Ebay and the sellers would be out of luck.