I've done quite a lot on EBay. I think over 100 purchases.

The only time I've had serious problems were with incredibly cheap audio CD collections, which turned out to be pirated. That was a case where the folks were selling a whole ton of copies, not just one.

The more money they stand to make (either from one sale or an identical batch), the more you should check the seller's credentials. You can tell how long they've been doing this, and their percentage of happy customers, by clicking on their ratings in the top right.

In your case, the seller has been doing this a really long time, has thousands of satisfied customers, and a 480:1:1 ratio of positive feedback to neutrals and negatives. So they've got a great track record. No reason to not trust them, I'd say.

T

I buy a lot on eBay, mainly from the antiquarian book section. I've found some good deals, but I've also bid a bit too much on occasion, but that's my own fault. It is easy to get carried away. I've never had any problem with sellers, and second Tom's advice re. feedback credentials.

Beware of people who come in at the last second and outbid you. This happens more and more often and is incredibly annoying.

But isn't the mechanism that you specify starting and maximum bids, and the system auto-bids for you as needed?

I don't do much eBay (although I did buy a 48 pt foundry Pascal last month), but the one guideline I've realized is that you should never be the first bidder, unless you're also the last - meaning you shouldn't be the one to bring an item to the attention of others until the last seconds.

Something else, BJ: you're on dial-up,right? The latency might get you sometimes.

hhp

But isn't the mechanism that you specify starting and maximum bids, and the system auto-bids for you as needed?

Sort of. Your maximum bid remains the hidden highest bid until someone outbids you. But this means that someone can come in the last few seconds with a significantly higher bid -- high enough to pretty much guarantee that they'll get it -- and get the item for only a little more than your maximum bid.

Doesn't that in effect mean your maximum bid was too low?
I think I now understand this: "I've also bid a bit too much on occasion" :-)

hhp

Thanks for the info Thomas, John and Hrant.

That auction I linked had an odd bid history ...
don't quite get it ... lyrical leaf seemed to be
bidding against himself (or herself) ... is that
somehow automated?
btw, i'm on dialup at home, high-speed at the office.

bj

Doesn't that in effect mean your maximum bid was too low?

If an auction has a time limit on it, like eBay, I don't see any point in a fixed budget: you'll lose almost every time. And if you put in a very high bid all the time, you'll usually end up paying too much all the time. So the trick is to make a series of incremental bids responsive to what other people are doing, not just make one bid and hope for the best. The frustration comes when your last bid is for $500 and someone comes along five seconds before the auction ends and gets the item for $500.50.

>>I don't see any point in a fixed budget: you'll lose almost every time
I think a fixed budget is a necessity, or you'll end up paying too much a lot of the time. There must be an amount over which an item becomes a poor deal. Paying over the odds for an item isn't 'winning', its just another form of losing.

But if your fixed budget for an item is $100, the nature of the eBay mechanism -- time limit and incremental increases -- makes it likely that you will see the item go to someone else for only a little more than that. A bidder coming in in the last few seconds knows there is very little chance of having to pay his maximum bid, so can gamble that the current maximum bid is not much more more than what is showing. It is necessary to tailor one's bidding strategy to the nature of the auction. At a live auction, when there is no time limit and I can see the other bidders, I have a totally different approach.

Of course I have an actual budget in mind, which correlates to what I think the item is worth (when I've overpaid for an item, it is because I've overestimated its value), but this budget is certainly variable enough to take into account an extra 50 cents or whatever the incremental increase set by the seller is. I don't mind losing an item that goes well beyond what I am willing to pay, but it is frustrating to see items getting away for small change.

I've recently entered the seller's game on eBay and have done some buying here and there. This is what I think I know about it.

Like chess there are a number of different game strategies for bidding on eBay. Beginning, middle, ending.

A friend of mine has some kind of software that can be keyed for the end game. It will activate a bid within seconds of the auction ending. He doesn't even have to be there, the software does the bidding for him. A very high bid here will secure the item at only a little more than the previous bid. I think a lot of folks are using stuff like this. Only real safeguard against this is to place a middle to late bid for what the item is actually worth on the open market, lowest value will often do. You will rarely lose this way and will still get it cheaper. Just not as cheap as in your dreams.

Sometimes you might have to bid early to detect if there is a reserve or bid early to middle to detect if the hidden high bid is beyond what you realistically want to pay, and you don't really want to spend an awful lot of time dealing with the particular auction. Or if you can't be there when the auction ends. Real problem with bidding earlier at a higher price is when some newbie runs the sucker up with idiotic repeated incremental bids to find out what the bottom is.

Items that sell for a consistent price can easily be won by simply bidding that price early on and then ignoring the rest of the auction. I've been buying camera accessories that way recently and still get new items at 60 to 75 percent of what I would have to pay for them at discount stores.

When you see someone bidding against their own previous bid, you know they want it pretty bad, at any cost, and you could end up paying a lot by intervening with a bid. But sometimes this is just a ploy on the part of the bidder.

Lots of good advice in this thread, bj. A few suggestions from my experience on Ebay:

- Do your homework. Do some research and compare prices, descriptions, and sellers. Like everything else in life, if it's too good to be true, it's probably not true.

- If there's something you really want, avoid the automatic bidding and be present at closing time.

- Make sure you read carefully all the fine print. Shipping costs, payment methods, etc.

- Trust high sellers with positive ratings, it's on their interest to keep customers satisfied. Also, read the comments people post in the feedback section, they are a very good indication on what to expect.

- Since you can always contact the seller privately, do not trust people not willing to provide enough info or the ones that don't show images of expensive items; if you were selling something valuable, you would provide as many pics as you could in order to entice customers, wouldn't you?

- When confronted with multiple options, follow your instinct.

It might sound as if I have encountered a lot of crooks on Ebay but that's not true. Most of my bad experiences (not that many) have been my fault for getting carried away or for not being careful enough. In all, I have gotten quite a few gems, like a very nice copy of the 1923 ATF specimen book.

Good luck!

A friend of mine has some kind of software that can be keyed for the end game. It will activate a bid within seconds of the auction ending. He doesn't even have to be there, the software does the bidding for him.

Which I consider very unsporting. Mind you, it would have been useful while I was out this afternoon missing the closing of this auction.

"True. Sniping is a reality you have to be prepared for... especially with people like Jared around. =)"


Yeah, but at least if he snipes something from you you can cry and get it back.

:runs:

There is a certain courtesy you can extend by not sniping people you know (or perhaps that would be the reason to snipe). I would be happy to not bid against fellow typophiles if it were something that I didn't *have* to have. I would hope others might do the same. If you want to know my Ebay name, I am the only bidder on this nice Penrose Annual.
Since I already have a copy, I am not going to bid any more than the $7.50 I have bid already. So I would be happy to see anyone here get it.

bj, you might check http://www.abebooks.com and http://www.bookfinder.com first.

btw:
http://www.abebooks.de/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=120585094

"but this budget is certainly variable enough to take into account an extra 50 cents or whatever the incremental increase set by the seller is"

John

The incremental increase isn't set by the seller. eBay sets this, the seller has no control over it.

By rummaging around in Google I've recently discover that the various sniper software (or whatever it is called) is seemingly ever in various states of revision as eBay is constantly changing its own software. Not to screw up these folks, eBay has no policy on that, but the various sniper software vendors are always complaining about having to issue new versions. Pity. Its not just the sniper-less buyers who don't like this kind of bidding, the sellers don't either. I suspect eBay really has no policy on it because they figure if folks are dumb enough to buy sniping software its just more activity for them. They make their money from percentages of sales and various listing fees that the seller has to pay for.