Snipe on Ebay – The Easy Way!

Maybe you know the feeling, you’re salivating over an under-priced item on eBay. Your seconds away from owning the item. You’ve been the high bidder since the auction started. Just as the auctions ends, you refresh the listing page to bask in the joy of your new-found ownership – and you’ve been OUTBID. SNIPED.

If you’d have known it would sell for paltry $1.25 more then your max bid, you’d have bumped ‘er up a little. Now that antique-one-of-a-kind trinket that you’ve been daydreaming about is gone. You’re in pain.

You imagine the guy that beat you out. Chuckling like a madman, rolling on the floor in pure glee right after he completes checkout to claim his stolen goods. Oh, the pain! What you wouldn’t give to trade spots, just this once…

Well, you’re in luck, because you can next time. Be that guy. For free. Heart-broken eBayer – meet Gixen. It makes sniping on eBay too easy. Heck, you’ll probably do it for fun.


eBay Sniper

4 Replies to “Snipe on Ebay – The Easy Way!”

  1. When shopping on ebay I decide what the object is worth to me. I commit to that and submit it. If I win, I win. That does not mean that I got a bargan. The value of anything in the market place is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it, not one cent more or one cent less. That applies even if I think the price paid was too high. The buyer sets the value. If the bid goes to someone else, they win and the only way I lose is if I didn’t offer what the value of the object was to me.

    Good to see that you’re posting again.

  2. Martin:

    Your reasoning is wonderful, in that you should never pay more than an object is worth to you. [Something plenty of people don’t realize until after buyer’s remorse sets in.]

    However, on eBay, the price many people pay isn’t solely based on the utility they derive from the item itself. I know from experience that they OFTEN pay EXTRA for the THRILL of beating someone else. Outbidding someone provides its own utility to some, that they are willing to pay for.

    It makes perfectly good sense to give an item a value outside of the last minute bidding wars… saving yourself from having to pay for the satisfaction derived from winning that “battle”.

    I propose, however, that sniping is a more effective means to that end. You give your item a value at your leisure – you walk away – you can never pay a cent more than what the item is worth to you. At the same time, you’re also detracting from the thrill of the last minute bidding wars.

    There may be enough people bidding that the wars still go on – driving up the final price of the auction, but at least YOU are no longer providing the incentive.

    What do you think? Glad to see you’re commenting!

  3. If someone is bidding for the thrill, the value of the object is of no consequence. What they are really bidding on is winning. At that point it is no longer an auction but a game in which the thrill seeker is playing by himself. It’s the equivilant of let’s say me driving on the interstate and deciding that I’m going to race another vehicle to the next major city. As the other driver is unaware of my intent I’m then in control of the race. If the other driver leaves the interstate before the next major city I win. If I’m intent on winning I can invest more fuel and go faster, even risking the penalty of a ticket. If I set limits on myself, say going no faster than 74 MPH I’m no longer in it just for the win. I’ve added another factor, skill at navigating through traffic in a more skillful manner than my “competitor.” What a thrill if I get no ticket and win the “race.” You can probably come up with similar scenerios for personal entertainment with clueless competition that won’t cost the price of the winning auction bid.
    Back to the snipe approach. Whatever the circumstance my ebay max bid is in the queue and self adjusts until it reaches the limit. There has to be a queue and a pecking order for the snipe program/s. There has to be some agreeable limit that the bidder is willing to pay. Is he really any better off than I at that point? The bidding war is going to take place be it days on end or the last few seconds of the auction. What happens with several bidders using different snipe programs, a shoot out until the absolute last tick on the clock? I either case it’s about the value of the object to the individual bidder. Do I really need another program on my computer?

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