[beatles guy]

One advantage is does give you if you bid early on ebay you are in fact making others drive up the price. For instance if there is 3 days left on an auction and you place a max bid of $20, you are determining the value of that auction for the other bidders to bid. If there is no action on an item people may wait and keep the price down then you slide in with your snipe bid and get it for a lot less if you went back and forth with someone for 3 days.

Correct, and we all want to get the card for the lowest price.

Besides that, Gavel Snipe bids at about 20 seconds left in the auction. So really, the advantage is to someone sitting by their computer who can bid at 10 seconds. I sat and watched one night just to see

[imnotded]

So your telling me that having a program that snipes if fair to someone that sits there and waits? there is a big difference. Your using a program that gives you an edge, That makes you faster. Some poor person who wants a card or item may never get it because of these types of programs. I don't use them and i win 95% of the auctions i bid on. You people must be slow lol

These programs are no different that entering in your bid, then waiting until there is a few seconds left until you click the "Confirm Bid" button.

[nolan5000]

I've never had this much response to one of my threads.

[iujapander]

One advantage is does give you if you bid early on ebay you are in fact making others drive up the price. For instance if there is 3 days left on an auction and you place a max bid of $20, you are determining the value of that auction for the other bidders to bid. If there is no action on an item people may wait and keep the price down then you slide in with your snipe bid and get it for a lot less if you went back and forth with someone for 3 days.

This is exactly it. I don't use a snipping program but I always wait until the last possible second to put in my max bid.

Using the $20 example. If I put it in with three days left then inevitable someone comes along and will bid $5 (their max bid). They see that didn't work, so then all of a sudden their max bid is $8. Then they put in $12, etc. etc. Where if you had just waited to put in your max bid, then there bid would have remained at $5, and you win it for $5.50 as opposed to the other person having time to "feel out" your max price and driving up the costs.

Given ebays current structure it makes NO SENSE AT ALL to bid until the final seconds. However if they went to the structure of if there is a bid in the last five minutes, then the auction is extended for another five minutes, that would eliminate the advantage of snipping.

[ca4n6chuck]

i have never used sniper programs, but I may check out some of these out

[ricelynnevans75]

I've never cheated either; I was merely looking into cheating.

Don't worry, not laughing at you. This is probably one of the best lines I've ever seen on here and one of probably 2-3 that actually made me laugh.

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If I use one, I use auctionsniper.com and I think it's about a quarter for each auction that you snipe and actually win. I don't know of any others and have used this one for about the last decade so I just stuck with what I know.

I can't say I use it a lot though. Maybe around 5 times a year? I use it for the sole purpose of avoiding people bidding up the auction price and trying to keep my price as low as possible. It bids with about 3-6 seconds left. It's no more different than sitting at the computer in the last few seconds and bidding.

With that said, I don't recall using the service unless I know I was going to be away from the computer or really wanted the item and didn't want to risk ebay messing up in the last few seconds. That only happened to me once about 12 years ago but I still remember it. Otherwise, I'll be at the computer and bid in the last minute or so. I think the last time I used it (that I recall) was in late '09 or early '10 on a 2009 Finest Evan Longoria Red refractor. It ended during the middle of the day and I knew I was going to be on the road when it ended so the snipe was placed and won the card for me while I was driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike.

[jszczech]

I used to "live" snipe all the time so I dont really look at the snipe program as cheating. It's nice to not have to sit at the computer and wait to put the bid and hope it works though. I had a couple issues where my bid didn't go through and I lost the item when I wasn't using a sniping service but since I switched I have yet to have any issues.

[shezdoni]

I use goofbay, it is free with a lot of extra features, like finding items that are spelled wrong, not in the title search, seller history, feedback checker, bid history, best offer auctions etc.....

It allows me to set the time as to when I want my snipe to go through, from _ hrs, down to 1 second, they have it set up for all the different ebay world sites, you just have to make sure that you click on the United States site.

http://www.goofbay.com/

[ricelynnevans75]

This is exactly it. I don't use a snipping program but I always wait until the last possible second to put in my max bid.

Using the $20 example. If I put it in with three days left then inevitable someone comes along and will bid $5 (their max bid). They see that didn't work, so then all of a sudden their max bid is $8. Then they put in $12, etc. etc. Where if you had just waited to put in your max bid, then there bid would have remained at $5, and you win it for $5.50 as opposed to the other person having time to "feel out" your max price and driving up the costs.

This is pretty much it in a nutshell. Auctions are going to dig into people's competitive side where someone might place their bid and it's not high enough or they get outbid. For some, it no longer is a matter of trying to get a card they want at their max bid and it just becomes a matter of winning, regardless of how much they actually wanted the card in the first place. Bid in the last few seconds and you avoid that.

[frostycollects]

I use eSnipe often.

I just don't want to be at my computer every time an auction ends. I don't want that to get in the way of other things I do in life. When I do have time, there's no guarantee that my computer would stay online or the power would not go out during the auction's last few moments...oh, that happened to me 2 or 3 times in the long past.

Also, it helps me from becoming a victim of auction fever as well.

Sniping is pretty common...I get outsniped sometimes and there's nothing I can do about it.