Is Sniping Fair?

they have to hide the other bidders highest bid amount. This prevents people from bidding up to the maximum.
I have a stamp for sale on ebay. You start the bid at $1.00, but your maximum bid price is $20.00. If I know that when my "shill" account logs in, I will bid 19.00, to make you pay your maximum bid amount. If I hadn't know the maximum, You might have gotten it for 4 or 5 dollars.

Make sense to you now?

I'm an avid sniper and use a service when I can't do it manually (due to work or family demands). I became a sniper when I got nibbled to death on a MH 573 many moons ago. I placed my maximum bid of $100 or so with an hour to go and went to do some chores. When I came back there was ONE other bidder who bid $75, then $78, then $81 etc. until FINALLY outbidding me. It is not my job to inform other bidders what the true value of an item is. ebay and other "auction" venues are NOT auction venues. It's more like a sealed bid for savvy buyers. Sometimes the seller does worse and sometimes better due to the snipers, but I simply will NOT bid if I can't snipe, so I can't help a seller get more if I can't bid. I am a buyer, not a seller, but my goal is to purchase what I want for a LITTLE MORE than what a re-seller would buy it for. I don't want to get into a bidding war with another buyer. Patience is the key.

Welcome larsdog.

If you haven't already, please go to the Introduction forum and post a message there so everyone can get to know you.

to SCF

I look forward to learning more about your collection and interests,

Kirk

Bobby131313 Sounds good..an auction with ground rules..that everyone understands and can be enforced....on the Wensy site the auction is strictly between buyer and seller and the site does not get involved ..of course if someone does something obviously wrong the membership will sound off and spread the word..thats the only protection !!

OK I'll admit to sniping at times. I'll wait and jump in in the last seconds. As someone said, if it's something I really want, it's good to see where the bids are going. And unlike a live auction, you can't 'read' the room or see how others are bidding. You're going in blind.
Often I have a limited budget for bidding (basically what's in my paypal account. Whatever I make from selling goes to buying. That way I don't get carried away - easily done - and the wife doesn't get any surprises...keeps everyone happy). So with a budget I've got to be more careful.
And frankly sniping doesn't ensure winning the auction. I've lost lots of stamps that way because of waiting until the last seconds, and than I don't have time to rebid if I've been outbid by another bidders maximum. It's no guarantee.
And, without getting all 'new age', if I don't win the item, I figure it wasn't meant to be. There's lots more out there.
And as a seller, I kind of pray for those snipers. Those last second bids are appreciated.

Sniping prevents me from getting emotionally involved in the bidding process. I figure out what I am willing to pay for a stamp, set my snipe limit and walk away. I will not revisit. If I win YAY, if not, then I wasn't willing to pay the price someone else was. I will wait.

Sniping is the only way to bid. It's an auction ! Why drive the price up on something you want to buy ? Everyone bidding on things should know how to obtain something for as little money as possible. Since probably a fair amount of people use sniping software, you must take the "If you can't beat them, join them " attitude. Also the majority of items I want, end when I won't be in front of my computer so Sniping software works perfectly for me.

Just a thought....
Isn't sniping and shill bidding basically the same thing?
A way to add/keep more money in your pocket!

Paul

Paul, sniping is waiting til the last few seconds of an auction to have you sniping program start bidding for you, rather that bid the item up all during the auction. shill bidding is when the owner of an item creates a separate account to "fake" bid on something to drive the price up with someone else who wants the item. The owner feels very strongly or knows that the other bidder will reply with a higher bid, so he uses his fake account to bid and drive up the price.

I snipe also-- only manually, have never used a service.

I don't do this with all bids-- if I'm just filling holes, then I may put in a bunch of low-ball bids hoping to win a few great buys. But if it's a "must have", I'll follow it to the end, and snipe with 10-15 seconds to go. It's really the non-golden rule-- "Do unto other ebay buyers before they do unto you", and as one of the other posters said, there still isn't a guarantee someone else isn't going to do the same thing and outbid me-- I've lost lots of auctions and will continue to as long as the rules are the same.

Bottom line is that it's a free market system, with millions of potential bidders- if you really want something, you can and should use any edge you can to win what you want at the price you're willing to pay-- and it really doesn't matter to me as a buyer what it does to the seller-- because they have a minimum price and they're taking a risk that an item is going to sell for a low-balled price at any time.

Great topic, BTW... Ray

I wanted to revive this topic. I've admitted to sniping. It's not fun when you get sniped, but admittedly rewarding when you snipe and it works.
Confession. I sniped (snipped?) a couple of US stamps last night, that I really wanted. The prices were good, same dealer, so a shipping discount and there were quite a few bidders, so lots of competition.
But I know how some of you feel about sniping, I'm leary of showing them off when the eventually arrive.
So my long winded question is, have any of you ever been sniped, only to see them shown off here by the sniper, on this site?
I'm not looking for forgiveness, I'm just curious.

I see sniping as the logical way to bid in all eBay-style auctions.

I've not bid very often in the last year or so but when I did this regularly I would usually set my bids up in advance to be snipe bids.

I found that this reduced my costs, made winning more likely, and separated setting my maximum bid from the emotion of "winning" the auction.

snipe away I say!! - I have and always will

But my question was, has something that you lost to a sniper appeared afterwards, here on SCF? This is a growing community, and I'm thinking it's bound to happen sooner or later.

well, here is my 2¢ on sniping; I don't like it as I see it as the guerrilla warfare on bidding, but then again I know how to foil the sniper (on ebay anyway) but that's my secret! lol I know it's fair and all as per say the rules but really your paying for the sniping services in most cases so in reality it's the sniper that's getting sniped in the end. ~peace

I don't mind it here friends or not bidding is bidding and if you don't watch your auction then it's your fault. I meant that with ALL due respect. after all it is an auction and if no one bids then it's a one sided auction IMHO.