Originally posted by: MrWunderful

A lot of people have time to waste sitting at a computer trying to buy a game for 20 they can flip for 35 and make an 8 dollar profit for a couple hours of work.

Let them have that shit.

Originally posted by: Jono1874
 


Thats basically where I'm at with this. If people want to waste hours to save $12 more power to them.

Originally posted by: 14u2ponder
  You actually don't pay the maxium. 

Example: say you are looking at an auction that is currently sitting at $9.87 with 2 bidders for Kid Dracula loose cart (mint condition). There is 1:36 seconds till the gavel. You want to beat the bots and whoever else is willing to bid. SO:
you judge that you'd be willing to pay $88.65 for the cart. You feel if you can get it UNDER $90 then you got a bargain. With this number in mind, you decide to put a final bid of $90 on the cart and cross your fingers.
At 5 seconds left to go, you unleash your bid: $90. At the same time, the bots and other humans who are trying to get it release their bids, and here's where ebay makes it FAIR and why the bots aren't better than anybody else bidding.
Ebay's bot system is sorting through all of these bids at a lightnighing pace. It does 3 things.
First it looks to see what the current high bidder's maximum bid is. When the high bidder put in his bid, he had the option of putting a number that HE was willing to buy the game for. So for example, let's say that the current high bidder put in a $50 bid, and so he outbid the person who was the previous high bidder's mark, and was sitting at $9.87 as his CURRENT high bid. Remember, that when HE placed the bid, he did not BID $9.87, he bid $50. So in order to beat his bid you need to go over that amount.
So now comes the more complicated part. At the end of an auction, everybody is putting in last minute bids and say you do the same. Say you bid $10, and then look to see you have been outbid to $10.50. The important part here is that the person who bid $10.50 did not have to do anything. Ebay's bot saw that he has a bid of $50, so ebay took your bid, and increased the high bid accordingly. This concept is important. Because let's go back to your $90 maximum bid. If you bid $90 at the end of the auction and no one else bid anything, then you WIN that auction and your final bid would not be $90, it would be $50.50, or just over the maximum bid that came in or was already in.

So see, the bots don't have an advantage on you other than the fact they are willing to bid more than you.

 

Originally posted by: 14u2ponder
 
they are saving a lot more than $12 dollars relative to ebay prices anyway. Although admittedly ebay prices are outragously high, so anything that sells for close to game value now prices looks like a steal on most games. This usually doesn't affect loose carts as much as it affects boxed gameboy games. Since there are so many loose carts for every gameboy, only the rarest title gets sniped the way I'm talking. But BOXED games, oh my lord - since you may not find a similar box listed for who knows how long, if the prices are normal and not inflated, it's gone as fast as it's listed. 
Although timing is also an issue: I bought a sealed gameboy advance and spent $40 more than one that got listed less than a week after I bought mine. At the time, the one I bought was $70 less than any other one listed. The problem is you don't know if another will be listed for a lot lower price, so you have to buy it when you can.
 

Originally posted by: Outdoormongoose
 
That's how I won without over spending a lot of the time.

I would factor in pricechart, condition, shipping....etc. Then I would come up with a price of what it would cost and what I thought most would try to pay for it. I'd go over that by a whole 50c. If a seller had multiple items I'd factor in combo-shipping and email the seller before bidding. It's not worth my time or money to sit there for hours watching for games to save a few buck here and there.

If it went over that...good for them but they overspent. I had a few go to crazy amounts for no reason at all. 

I caught one low priced BIN at random. It ended up being a return(lying seller about disc rot) so I don't really look for those anymore. I figure there's a reason those are cheap. 
 

Originally posted by: MrWunderful
 
Relative to ebay prices are irrelevant. If you are going to be a dirty reseller, at least make money. If you want to buy things at market value because “its cheaper than ebay prices”, it seems like nonsense. Im not going to tell people how to spend their time, but I will for sure make fun of them for it!
 

Originally posted by: Jono1874






Thats basically where I'm at with this. If people want to waste hours to save $12 more power to them.

Originally posted by: Maertens29
 


You guys are being to stereotypical with how you see it. It takes seconds to refresh eBay, and it can be done literally anywhere. Who uses a computer to search ebay!? I assume close to no one. The effort is very minimal and once your get good at it the payoff can be immense.

Originally posted by: Woobie

I know ebay used to be you put a maximum bid and thats what it would jump to (regardless of what others put), but doesnt really work like that now (or for a while)

Originally posted by: gunpei

When? I've been using ebay since before paypal and I don't remember ever seeing it work like that. Are you sure it wasn't just displaying your max bid FYI?

 

Originally posted by: Woobie
 


I could be remembering it wrong but I seem to recall it being that way when I first used eBay (late 90-early 2000). Should not of stated it so definitely (I know vs I remember). Maybe I just remember it showing your max bid (and not it actually being at your max)

Originally posted by: coffeewithmrsaturn

Is this thread about auction sniping or BIN sniping? I feel like there are 2 different conversations happening here.

Originally posted by: 14u2ponder
You actually don't pay the maxium. 

Example: say you are looking at an auction that is currently sitting at $9.87 with 2 bidders for Kid Dracula loose cart (mint condition). There is 1:36 seconds till the gavel. You want to beat the bots and whoever else is willing to bid. SO:
you judge that you'd be willing to pay $88.65 for the cart. You feel if you can get it UNDER $90 then you got a bargain. With this number in mind, you decide to put a final bid of $90 on the cart and cross your fingers.
At 5 seconds left to go, you unleash your bid: $90. At the same time, the bots and other humans who are trying to get it release their bids, and here's where ebay makes it FAIR and why the bots aren't better than anybody else bidding.
Ebay's bot system is sorting through all of these bids at a lightnighing pace. It does 3 things.
First it looks to see what the current high bidder's maximum bid is. When the high bidder put in his bid, he had the option of putting a number that HE was willing to buy the game for. So for example, let's say that the current high bidder put in a $50 bid, and so he outbid the person who was the previous high bidder's mark, and was sitting at $9.87 as his CURRENT high bid. Remember, that when HE placed the bid, he did not BID $9.87, he bid $50. So in order to beat his bid you need to go over that amount.
So now comes the more complicated part. At the end of an auction, everybody is putting in last minute bids and say you do the same. Say you bid $10, and then look to see you have been outbid to $10.50. The important part here is that the person who bid $10.50 did not have to do anything. Ebay's bot saw that he has a bid of $50, so ebay took your bid, and increased the high bid accordingly. This concept is important. Because let's go back to your $90 maximum bid. If you bid $90 at the end of the auction and no one else bid anything, then you WIN that auction and your final bid would not be $90, it would be $50.50, or just over the maximum bid that came in or was already in.

So see, the bots don't have an advantage on you other than the fact they are willing to bid more than you.

Originally posted by: Archon 1981

I'm old fashioned and I like the rush of the clock. I put my own bids in manually. GET OFF MY LAWN!