I hate snipers

[RichardCGH]

Grrrr.
Thought I'd got the Tony Bridge book of QL Adventurers on eBay.
Watched - less than a minute to go all was fine - and then over the space of 6 seconds the price was upbid beyond what I had bid several days ago no less than 7 times.
4 different bidders. Apparently.
Wouldn't be surprised if one or more were sock puppet bids done to boost the price.
No chance to up my bid.

[vanpeebles]

Always a give away for shill bidding, when it reappears again as a new listing!

[NormanDunbar]

I read a while back about Ebay Bots which watch something until th last few seconds, then place your bid. Assuming the price hasn't gone above your price of course.

Maybe it's something like that?


Cheers,
Norm.

[dilwyn]

Grrrr.
Thought I'd got the Tony Bridge book of QL Adventurers on eBay.
Watched - less than a minute to go all was fine - and then over the space of 6 seconds the price was upbid beyond what I had bid several days ago no less than 7 times.
4 different bidders. Apparently.
Wouldn't be surprised if one or more were sock puppet bids done to boost the price.
No chance to up my bid.

Yeah, that's eBay auto-bidding for you. I get done by this a lot when buying old Welsh records on eBay.

I normally put in the max I'm prepared to bid straight away when it says "enter your maximum bid) (say, £20). From that £20, it starts off by bidding the "minimum selling price" set by the seller (say, £5), or just above any existing bid (e.g. if someone else bid £6 it might start you off at £6.50 or thereabouts. Then if anyone else bids more than you, but less than your maximum it will at some point bid a slightly higher amount for you (normally by about 50p, but it depends on what the current bid value is) in the last few seconds, until it beats any other bid, provided it doesn't exceed the maximum bid value you set for yourself. As you said, doesn't give you a chance to up your bid in those last few seconds because of this flurry of automatic bids in the closing seconds.

Well worth swotting up on how the automatic bids work, to give yourself the best chance in the frantic world of last minute auto-bidding!

[Pr0f]

I hate the auto bid bots.

My usual trick if I really want something is to look around to see if anyone is selling the same item - and if so whether there is a buy it now for a sensible price - quite often I'll watch the same thing on several ebay items - and if one goes silly on bidding - I will take the buy it now for the lower price on one of the other items.

Some other useful tips:

Look for items that are mis spelled - they don't always show up on everyone's radar, so you may have a clearer bidding field

Work out your maximum bid amount - say £20 for an item and increase it to £21.51 - or some other random slightly higher figure - and if you can avoid bidding on it till the last 10 seconds or so - I usually keep one browser tab on the original item, and open another with the bid set to confirm and just wait for that last few seconds - if someone outbids you - it was more than you wanted to pay anyway.

[kmmann]

Hi

I have spare copy of ql adventures if you would like it. Postage needed but otherwise free to a worthwhile home - yours in this particular case. Just pm me if interested. Promise no last minute price increase.

Kevin

[stephen_usher]

Other advise is, don't bid early. Bid bots notice bidding and latch onto activity. If the item has no bids until the last minute you're likely to win if you put your maximum bid in within the last 5 seconds.

[RichardCGH]

Thanks for all the comments.

I normally don't do auctions, but with these books it's the only time I've seen them available for years.

Trying to out-algorithm auto-bidding sites is clearly a skill I'll need to learn.

Practically impossible to bid at the last moment - takes time to enter an amount, press enter then ebay asks to confirm it.

Ultimately ofc it comes down to not bidding enough in the first place - or how many people are desperate enough to bid for something.

In other news - I did manage to get the QL Book of Games at a reasonable price too For some reason it didn't show up if you searched in "sinclair QL".
So I'll have to get a working system up and running so i can type in the listings

[RichardCGH]

Hi

I have spare copy of ql adventures if you would like it. Postage needed but otherwise free to a worthwhile home - yours in this particular case. Just pm me if interested. Promise no last minute price increase.

Kevin

many thanks indeed - most generous

I've sent you a PM.

[mk79]

I read a while back about Ebay Bots which watch something until th last few seconds, then place your bid. Assuming the price hasn't gone above your price of course.

Maybe it's something like that?

I always use a sniper software (this is a normal software that runs on my Mac). I give it the auction, set my max price and forget about it. A few days later when the auction ended I either get an eMail that I got outbid or that I got the item. Stress-free and you cannot get dragged into a bidding war.