I remember learning about proxy bidding...

[TripleF]

15 years ago, or more....
I place a bid....BOOM automatically outbid.
Repeat. Same thing.
I'm like....this guy is watching me bid.
I bid again. BOOM! Outbid.

It's funny when I see people place the minimum amount to take over the bid and BOOM they're outbid. LOL I wonder
what they're thinking.

These days....I place a bid, usually one bid, of the max amount I will pay. If it never reaches my amount I automatically outbid (proxy)
by the next minimum to take the lead and pay only that amount!.

If someone outbids me......well it wasn't meant to be mine....LOL

I have it going on right now with that "lot" of knives with the 2 Hammer Brand auto's in it. I'm laughing each time the guy gets outbid by a dollar.

[jerryd6818]

I started out doing that. Just bid and bid and bid, then one day I had an epiphany. What the heck are you doing? You're just running the price up doing this foolishness, so I started manually sniping (entering my max bid during the last 6 seconds). That worked great except I had to be there for the end of the auction and sometimes I would get sidetracked and miss it. Then I discovered Gixen, a free (or at least it was free when I started using it) sniping program that works like a charm. Now I use that exclusively. Set it and forget it. But! You have to be willing to set a max bid and do that at least a few minutes ahead of time and you have to be willing to trust Gixen with your eBay username and your password.

[espn77]

I sold a ka bar swing guard lockback stag handle knife for $750. The knife ran one bid at a time the last hour of the auction. The guy contacted me and said he had been drinking pretty heavily and wasn't going to let anyone push him around, after he paid. I always try to end the auctions late hoping for the same results the value of a live auction is a mans worst nightmare.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Yup - I have been using snipe programs since ~2001 or 2002. On ebay, I have specific search filters that return the brands and types of knives I am interested in that are below my price threshold, and the the results are sorted by ending soonest. I then scan down and look for anything interesting and add 2 or 3 to the snipe program. Of course, this is only when I'm in buying mode!

My typical search criteria (I have several) is:
(case, camillus, queen, schatt, robeson, cattaraugus, remington, buck, western, kabar, ka-bar)
Category: Collectible Folding Knives (this will also search all sub-categories from here)
US-Only
<$40 (Yeah, yeah, I know - I'm a bottom feeder...)

Unfortunately, including "case" in the search causes a lot of junk knives that include a case or sheath to be returned. But, whatcha going to do - I have to include Case, and nothing's ever perfect.

So, for any sellers out there, please put the brand in the title! Just saying "Vintage Knife" or something like that isn't going to work!

[rea1eye]

I have never used a proxy bid. In a way, I think it should be outlawed.
I think in makes the bidding field unlevel and takes some of the "fun"
out of the whole ebay thing.

Just my opinion.

Bob

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

I have never used a proxy bid. In a way, I think it should be outlawed.
I think in makes the bidding field unlevel and takes some of the "fun"
out of the whole ebay thing.

Just my opinion.

Bob

Can you explain a bit more how it is unfair? You enter your maximum price and you either win or lose.

[rea1eye]

I have never used a proxy bid. In a way, I think it should be outlawed.
I think in makes the bidding field unlevel and takes some of the "fun"
out of the whole ebay thing.

Just my opinion.

Bob

Can you explain a bit more how it is unfair? You enter your maximum price and you either win or lose.

I have lost many auctions at the last few seconds..probably due to to proxy bidding. I would feel
more comfortable to loosing to a person putting in a live bid. Maybe I am just a sore loser


Bob

[espn77]

I have never used a proxy bid. In a way, I think it should be outlawed.
I think in makes the bidding field unlevel and takes some of the "fun"
out of the whole ebay thing.

Just my opinion.

Bob

Can you explain a bit more how it is unfair? You enter your maximum price and you either win or lose.

I have lost many auctions at the last few seconds..probably due to to proxy bidding. I would feel
more comfortable to loosing to a person putting in a live bid. Maybe I am just a sore loser


Bob

How can you tell if it's a computer bidding or a person?

[jerryd6818]

I have lost many auctions at the last few seconds..probably due to to proxy bidding.

Bob

More likely to snipers like me.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

I have lost many auctions at the last few seconds..probably due to to proxy bidding. I would feel
more comfortable to loosing to a person putting in a live bid. Maybe I am just a sore loser


Bob

Well, if you lost, then the auction ended at a price higher than your maximum bid. If you were actually willing to pay that higher price, then you should have entered that price as your maximum bid. The key to proxy bidding is to always enter your maximum bid, not the price you want the auction to end at. You don't know what the other guy was willing to pay, their maximum might have been MUCH higher than yours.

[QTCut5]

Proxy or Snipe bidding can also be a double edge sword (no pun intended); you have to put in ONLY the max amount you are willing to pay, not a super high amount that you would never seriously consider paying in order to "guarantee" a win by exceeding anyone else's Snipe bid. I have made that mistake once or twice on knives I really really wanted. I put in a ridiculously high Snipe bid thinking that surely all other bidders would only put in "reasonable" bids. I now own a couple $50 knives for which I paid well over $100.

As a seller, however, this can be a gold mine. I once sold a late model stag Case Copperlock for $540 (!) because two bidders each put in super high Snipe bids that shot the price up almost tenfold in the final 2 or 3 seconds. Was I happy? You better believe it! And, no, I had no qualms whatsoever about taking that much money for a run-of-the-mill production knife of substantially less normal retail value. As any collector understands..."Value" is simply the amount someone is willing to pay for an item, regardless of what anyone else thinks the item is actually worth.

[wlf]

Proxy or Snipe bidding can also be a double edge sword (no pun intended); you have to put in ONLY the max amount you are willing to pay, not a super high amount that you would never seriously consider paying in order to "guarantee" a win by exceeding anyone else's Snipe bid. I have made that mistake once or twice on knives I really really wanted. I put in a ridiculously high Snipe bid thinking that surely all other bidders would only put in "reasonable" bids. I now own a couple $50 knives for which I paid well over $100.

As a seller, however, this can be a gold mine. I once sold a late model stag Case Copperlock for $540 (!) because two bidders each put in super high Snipe bids that shot the price up almost tenfold in the final 2 or 3 seconds. Was I happy? You better believe it! And, no, I had no qualms whatsoever about taking that much money for a run-of-the-mill production knife of substantially less normal retail value. As any collector understands..."Value" is simply the amount someone is willing to pay for an item, regardless of what anyone else thinks the item is actually worth.

Just a $50 overpay.... I’ve done much worse unfortunately. It’s was because I lost a couple of used knives. I bid only what they were worth to normal people. Sometimes as has been said, people don’t use common sense and get defensive, just refusing to lose.

These knives were not all that valuable, except to a type specific
collector.

[TripleF]

Can you explain a bit more how it is unfair? You enter your maximum price and you either win or lose.

I have lost many auctions at the last few seconds..probably due to to proxy bidding. I would feel
more comfortable to loosing to a person putting in a live bid. Maybe I am just a sore loser


Bob

How can you tell if it's a computer bidding or a person?

Once you place your max bid......the computer (ebay) does the rest automatically.

Let's say you want a knife but will pay no more than $50 for it.
Bid $50.00 right now.
You will automatically outbid each and every bidder. Automatically...
If the others bid the knife up to $42, you take over the lead instantly. The auction ends. You pay $43.
As I'm watching bidders, it's clear they don't know that. They come back and bid each time they
receive a notification, that they've been outbid. It's very simple way to bid.

[espn77]

Scott, do you think snipe bidding is bad for a seller? Do you think people bidding on the knife for the entire 7 days of the auction is bad for the seller? I play a little on Ebay and I welcome all kinds of bids. The ones that make me the most nervous is when nobody bids. unless it's a knife I want, then I really like that.

[TripleF]

Scott, do you think snipe bidding is bad for a seller? Do you think people bidding on the knife for the entire 7 days of the auction is bad for the seller? I play a little on Ebay and I welcome all kinds of bids. The ones that make me the most nervous is when nobody bids. unless it's a knife I want, then I really like that.

Nope....it's all part of the game. As a seller, I like that the bidder is notified if another bid has been placed, and if the auction is almost ending...LOVE THAT!!!

[Dinadan]

I do not use a proxy bid program, but I do snipe, which is basically the same thing. Long ago I realized that any bid I made before the final fifteen seconds of an auction just ran up the price I might finally pay. To me, that is a flaw in the way Ebay is set up, because there is zero reason to make a bid before the final seconds. I do seem to recall that a gun auction site that I used to visit had a fifteen minute rule, that is, an auction would not close until fifteen minutes after the last bid. That is a way of getting around the last minute sniping, whether by man or machine.

These days, most of the knives that I buy off Ebay are not the kind of thing that I consider worth sniping for. I just put a bid out there on the last day and if I get it, fine, and if I miss getting - I just saved myself thirty or forty dollars.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Yup, ebay has debated the fixed-time vs "15-minute rule" formats since the very beginning. I really don't know why they have always stuck to the fixed-time. My guess is that they feel it is the best compromise between good for sellers and good for buyers. A proxy bid system allows far more people to bid on each item than you would ever have in a live-auction.

[deo-pa]

I've always liked Extended Time Auctions. In that format if a bid is received within the last (say) 5 minutes then the ending time is automatically extended 5 minutes. This continues until no more bids are received within the last 5 minutes. For you classic car guys https://bringatrailer.com/ works that way (it uses 3 minutes).

The other great thing BaT does is allow comments and questions about the item to be posted. That really allows the experts to chime in on any issues they see. It's impractical for an outfit like eBay with millions of items as it requires some degree of human comment moderators. (At BaT, all first time commenters have their comment reviewed before it is posted.) Wouldn't you love to be able to add an "I believe that knife is fake because..." comment to a knife listing for all the world to see? It would sure help reduce the number of folks getting burned by bad knives. Or be able to say supporting things like, "John you've done a great job restoring that damaged handle!" Extended time auctions also greatly reduce, but do not entirely eliminate, sniping.

Dennis

[Dinadan]

snip

I Wouldn't you love to be able to add an "I believe that knife is fake because..." comment to a knife listing for all the world to see? It would sure help reduce the number of folks getting burned by bad knives. Or be able to say supporting things like, "John you've done a great job restoring that damaged handle!" Extended time auctions also greatly reduce, but do not entirely eliminate, sniping.

Dennis

Unfortunately,there have been a substantial number of threads on this forum where someone pointed out an Ebay knife as a counterfeit, but when more knowledgeable folks joined in, it turned that out the knife was authentic. So I would be extremely loath to post on Ebay that a knife at auction is fake, unless I were prepared to reimburse the vendor for any lost revenue.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

I think BaT is a completely different animal from eBay. On BaT you have a relatively small number of auctions occurring simultaneously (typically only a couple of hundred), and each auction is for a significant amount of money - often tens of thousands of dollars, and sometimes much, much more. This means that BaT can devote resources to manage each auction. BaT actually writes the auction listing for you. They have specific requirements for the quality of the photos and the information in the listing. If you don't provide adequate & correct information, BaT won't accept your auction. You can even pay BaT to have a professional photographer come to your location and take photos of your car for only $350. If you are selling a classic car worth $50K, paying $350 for professional photos is a bargain.

[TripleF]

And it blows me away when people tell me I forgot to bid or we were out for the night and.......

I'm like, you shoulda bid a higher amount instead of taking the chance to lose the auction.
I love coming home finding I won an auction because my bid kicked in for me!!


Just my 2 cents.