eBay Trading Company
Jul. 21st, 2003 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4Please bear in mind before reading this that there are no stupid questions, only STUPID PEOPLE. So, sorry in advance for being dense.
Can anybody provide me with a very quick beginner's guide to eBay bidding tactics? I simply have no idea how the bidding tends to work -- whether lots of bids tend to happen at the last minute, whether it's better to bid on the cheaper thing with more time to run or the thing that's already at a higher price but has less time to go, or ... or what. Or whether the bidding patterns vary enormously depending on the thing for sale, or stuff like that.
Er, basically, in summary, "hello, am clueless, but want to buy thing off eBay without spending masses more money than I need to". :-)
Can anybody provide me with a very quick beginner's guide to eBay bidding tactics? I simply have no idea how the bidding tends to work -- whether lots of bids tend to happen at the last minute, whether it's better to bid on the cheaper thing with more time to run or the thing that's already at a higher price but has less time to go, or ... or what. Or whether the bidding patterns vary enormously depending on the thing for sale, or stuff like that.
Er, basically, in summary, "hello, am clueless, but want to buy thing off eBay without spending masses more money than I need to". :-)
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Date: 2003-07-22 06:38 am (UTC)Bid the maximum amount you're willing to pay, make it a non-round figure (eg. 20.65 instead of 20.00), and then sit back and wait. Just be honest here - DO put in your maximum - you won't neccessarily have to pay that much, as ebay just ups the bid by the minimum amount to beat competeing bids as they occur.
It doesn't matter if someone has an auto-sniping-whatsit, as they still have to bid more than you to win the auction -- so if they bid more than your maximum, then you didn't want it at that price anyway, did you?
In my opinion, it is better to get in early, rather than wait till the last minute. This is because if you get in early, eg. while at 5 quid, and place your maximum bid, eg. 45 quid, then even if someone else bids 45 quid, you win by default as you were there first. In the meantime, hopefully other people will be scared off that item since it's more highly priced than the others, and will go off and attempt them instead.
remember that when you proxy-bid, you won't pay your maximum, you'll just pay the minimum to beat other people, or reach the reserve price, whichever of the two is higher.