On Feb 9, 11:41 pm, wrote:
Bidding fever.Whatever you think something is worth,set your price and
stick with it.If you don't win the bid,there will always be a next time.
cuhulin

I started using Ebay when Ebay was new and most people never heard of
it. I've been using Merlin Snipe software for years. It allows
multiple auctions, as many as you want. It lines them up in a list
with item number, item description, current price, my bid price (if
any; you can just monitor an auction if you want), high bidder (if
any), auction ending time, and time left. Merlin also synchs your
computer clock to ebay time to the second. In the early days I hung
over my computer to manually snipe, but you can't do that unless you
work at a computer, which I don't anymore. I learned early that if
you want to get the best price, you had better put your bid in at the
end of the auction. People who disparage sniping don't realize what's
going on. Example: A Transoceanic A600 on ebay is currently at
$37.00 (not really, just rhetorically). Three days seven hours to
go. I want this radio so I click on the auction number, and because I
have "auction grabber" enabled the auction is automatically placed on
Merlin's list. There are other people vying for this radio, too. Two
of them use Ebay's proxy bidder, which Ebay uses to boost its profits
by causing auctions to automatically run up higher. One guy (newbie)
thinks that he will go up to 68 dollars, and another (doofus) thinks
$72.50 is his limit. He really doesn't want to pay that much, but he
doesn't know very well how this works. He doesn't think that the
auction will go up nearly that much. As soon as doofus places his
$72.50 bid into Ebay, the auction suddenly shoots up to 69 bucks from
37. What happened? Ebay's proxy engine working for both newbie and
doofus automatically and quickly bid against each other, and since
doofus is bidding more that newbie, and newbie's max is 68, and the
auction rises in $1.00 increments, the price for the radio is suddenly
$69.00. Newbie is done and leaves this auction. Doofus is high
bidder now, and is unhappy and wondering what happened to the price.
Time goes by and another bidder bids up one increment and now the
radio is $71.00 with doofus still the high bidder. From 69 to 70,
then Ebay's proxy engine on behalf of doofus goes up another increment
to $71.00. Later is see this auction and the current results, and I
calculate that this radio has a leatherette cover that is in dirty but
good shape, will dye nicely and the few bad spots will easily repair
with liquid vinyl patch. The latch is all there, the chart/log book
has it's dial, antennas all there as well as tubes, thumbscrews, and
suction cups. It even has a manual. The radio is inoperative but
that's fine since I will do an electronic restoration on it.
Restoration will not be too difficult and restored it will be worth
over $200.00. Shipping is a reasonable $24.00. I do not know what
others have bid, but I set my snipe at $86.00. My snipe program is
set to snipe at 8 seconds. That is about as close as you can get to
consistently snipe. The backbone of the Internet is routers, which
are computers that route "packets" of data. There are time lags in
each router. And between routers, bandwidth (read: speed of
transmission) has nothing to do with each other and vary greatly. Who
knows how many routers there are or what the bandwidth is between
each? Now there is another person (qtcat) that wants this radio
bad. She bids $75.00 and now the radio is up to $73.50; doofus's
$71.50 plus the bid increment of 1 dollar. If I was to get into a
bidding war with qtcat the radio can shoot up to well over $100.00.
But at 8 seconds Merlin Snipe puts in a bid, the bid arrives at 4.35
seconds later, the radio is now suddenly up to 76 dollars, qtcat can
do nothing about it, and I win the auction for 76 bucks. whew
That's the way it works