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I’m sorry to hear that :(. I was watching that gothic unicorn out of curiosity too but had a feeling it would go up far too high for me to ever afford, lol.
Good luck in your search! 🙂Trust me…Snipers don’t always walk away with the prize. But the prize ALWAYS go to the person WILLING to pay the MOST for that particular piece, wether they snipe it or not. 😕
Also, if you know your maximum bid, and you watch the item for the last hour to see if the price goes higher, and it does…Right over your limit, then you don’t have to watch the rest of the auction and can move on to the next if you are watching more than one that end approximately the same time. 😉I have one of the unicorns already, so this wasn’t me. 🙂
JellyFish wrote:I was watching that unicorn as well, but seeing as I held one in my hand only two years ago and didnt want to spend the 95.00 dollars at the shop 😆 there was no way I could spend almost 300.00 dollars now. I did watch it to the end though and I HATE when a bid goes in at the last second. I do believe that person did have a bid in when it first started though. I hope you find one someday and at an even better price. 🙂
Anyone who finds one at that price could make a killing off of me 😆 I MUST have him!
I think I’m going to wait until he gets released in a new color. 😀
I agree with bayoudragon. I’m hoping for black 😀 I think that color would look really nice. If they do ever release a new color I bet the white ones will start selling at more reasonable prices also.
The way sniping works is that you put in your absolute highest bid so close to the end of the auction that if you are then winning, no-one has time to notice that and place a higher bid.
How is that different to putting in the exact same bid earlier? Because for most people, their “highest bid” is not really their highest. Most people, willing at the beginning to spend at an absolute maximum $200.00 for something they really want, will revise their “highest bid” if the bidding gets close to or slightly over $200.00.
Unfortunately for the buyer, but fortunately for the seller and eBay, eBay doesn’t run a sealed-bid second-price auction; they run an open-bid second-price-plus-increment auction. This means you don’t need to start out with your best bid, you get to rethink the value of the item you are bidding on in light of what others appear to be willing to pay, and you don’t necessarily end up actually paying as much as you bid.
If you constantly miss out on auctions for something that goes for around $200.00 because the highest you actually bid is $200.00, but really you would have been willing to pay a bit more but have slow fingers, then obviously the answer is to simply put in a bid of $1,000.00. Then, if the item would have gone to someone else for a couple of hundred, you instead would get it for just a couple of hundred plus the incremental amount of, what? Five dollars? A dollar?.
Of course, if anyone else comes up with the same bright but stupid idea, and places their bid later than you, you still win the item but it costs you the full $1,000.00.
On the other hand, if you have the money and are willing to do what it takes to get what you want, you don’t need to be an eBay junkie, trying to snipe things. You just always bid $1,000.00 or $10,000.00 or whatever, late in the auction, and most of the things you want you will likely get for not much over the usual price because usually no-one is foolish enough to try the “bid $1,000” idea unless they really do have a thousand dollars spare to gamble with.
One of the things I like ( and sometimes hate ) about furbid ( an auction side I use for fursuiting stuff ) Is that all the auctions end at a set time like ebay and then in small letters after the time it says (for example)
This auctions ends in 23 hours, 14 minutes, and 17 seconds (or 10 minutes after the last bid)
So you can’t snipe, only keep prolonging the auction in 10 minute incriments as the bids go higher.
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Dreamscape, Orion, Poison Dart, Fireberry, Spangler + Tigerberry DragonsAnd Dave Why is that stupid??
Provided you have the money and ARE willing to pay that much?
I have won a lot of items this way, back when I had the money. I just would make sure not to go too CRAZY with my top bid and made sure I have the money in the bank for that top bid. I ONLY had to pay enough to out bid the person behind me.
Why is this so bad and why do we keep bringing this up??
Sorry but it has been talked about here so many times I just don’t understnad why??
I used to wait until the last second and put in my top bid, that was how I won things. I don’t watch e-bay much anymore since I’m broke nowI snipe sometimes if I have the time and I really want the item. I’ve found I win more auctions and I pay less overall. I had some pretty high bids on early Windstone auctions that I always lost because someone outbid me in the last few minutes. I only started to win after I started to snipe, and I found I was paying less than I would have in the other auctions. Most of my ebay griffins I only paid about $300 for, and the ones I lost sold for over $700 (becuase my max bid was 700ish). And then I had to listen to people whine about having to pay so much for them. I was annoyed because I thought if you didn’t want to pay that much for it why did you outbid me? I was willing to pay that much for it and not complain.
But I’ve gotten over a lot of that competitive anger it’s not good for me and it really doesn’t accomplish anything. And sometimes I still get the pieces I lost I just have to wait a while. 🙂
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Sun Dragon Koi #3Dragon Master wrote:And Dave Why is that stupid??
Provided you have the money and ARE willing to pay that much?
I have won a lot of items this way, back when I had the money. I just would make sure not to go too CRAZY with my top bid and made sure I have the money in the bank for that top bid. I ONLY had to pay enough to out bid the person behind me.
Why is this so bad and why do we keep bringing this up??
Sorry but it has been talked about here so many times I just don’t understnad why??
I used to wait until the last second and put in my top bid, that was how I won things. I don’t watch e-bay much anymore since I’m broke nowNo no. I didn’t say that was stupid [edit: actually I did, didn’t I? But I meant under particular circumstances…]. Read the last part of my post again. Bidding high is GREAT if you have the money, because usually you don’t end up paying that much, or even close to it. But it IS stupid if you think you can break the system by bidding more than you can actually afford. That was the “stupid bright idea” I was referring to.
I also firmly believe in last-second-bidding if at all possible, for the reasons I outlined in the first part of my message: most people are willing to pay more than they intended, if given the opportunity to do so. Sniping at a reasonable amount is wonderful if you don’t mind losing auctions but do want to pay as low a price as possible on the occasions you do win; cutting to the chase and simply bidding way high is perfect if you want to win and can afford to do so on the odd occasions when someone else is also willing to pay way high. Of course, it’s still best to combine the two and snipe with that way high bid, to counter those who would simply drive up the price before realising they were seriously out of their depth.
eBay is a pretty fair bidding system, and most of the complaints I hear about it are sour grapes from people who failed to win an auction because they were unwilling or unable to pay the price needed to win it.
In particular, it’s important to recognise that how much you want something is entirely personal and cannot be directly compared to how much anyone else wants it. eBay roughly translates “degree of want” into “amount of cold hard cash” as being the easiest and most profitable way to decide who should get something.
Chrish, sorry you didn’t win that Gothic Unicorn!
I had not had to snipe (didn’t even know what it was until I joined this forum) auctions too often before; only a handful of auctions I’ve bid on I’ve had to do it.
Dave, thank you for stating what kind of bidding system e-bay employs! I hadn’t known that.
You all should just feel a little lucky NirvanaCat isn’t out there sniping anymore…She is the queen of it. I had her beat me in snipe wars for 2 years before I found this forum. (Jeez I used to get so MAD! 😡 ) I also kept wondering who rudiru was…Why I was getting beat by them constantly! Then I found out who it was, and was amazed someone out there had many more pieces than I did. *waves at FrozenDragon* 😀
Like I said, I admit to being a sniper, but I got tired of losing what I really wanted by bidding early on, with my max bid and getting sniped at the last second. I do however bid early if it’s something I can live without, or don’t want particularly bad, but wouldn’t mind having. If I lose, I lose…If not, the item is mine, and I pay for it.
Its all fair in collecting and ebay.Whoa, I didn’t mean to spark an argument about sniping 😕
I NEVER put in a ridiculously high bid at the last second because I can’t afford to…but even if I could, I would be pretty mad if I tried that tactic on something I thought was worth $300, and ended up having to pay $900-1000 for it. In the end, whether it’s right off the bat or at the last minute, I’m just too chicken to bid more than I know I can afford or truly want to pay. Sometimes I have gotten into trouble that way, bidding juuust a little more to try and break that bid! I bid $280 for the unicorn, which I think is MORE than fair, especially since it looks like he’s got scuffs on his front hooves and an odd dark dot on his hind legs. But, someone wanted him more than me so that’s that.
I think times like these are just an opportunity to try to be a gracious loser.
I’m a sniper…I know that I am not disclipined enough to be in a bidding war in the end with back and forth bidding, and I could tend to go over what I intended to pay to try to win something. A sniper bid where I enter the Max I am willing to pay in the last few seconds, means I will have no time to enter another bid, if I win it, great, if I don’t, then it was not meant to be. I have usually found that something else comes around the corner for me anyway… 😀
I like your approach 49er. That’s what I do, if I do end up trying to snipe an auction. But lately I’ve deliberately NOT been sniping. Since it is true that people are more likely to raise their highest bid in the last seconds, at least for me. I’ve made some downright stupid decisions in those final heated moments when I’m in a war with another last-minute bidder. That adrenaline is worse than alcohol for judgment!! @_@
….It wasn’t you who got the Goth was it? 😉 I promise I’m happy for you if so!
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