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I can just bid my maximum a few hours before the auction ends and then forget about it.
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This I would never do. You are just asking to spend more for an item than you have to in some cases.
If you snipe, you prevent the "Damn, I should've bid $5 more" folks from bidding $5 more. Sniping an auction gives less information to your competitors, real or shill. Bidders are not always rational actors. They do not realize what their actual break point is.
There are some bidders on an ebay auction that will keep bidding up until they are the highest bidder. If you put a max bid in with a few minutes or more to spare then such bidders will have an opportunity to keep bidding in increments until they eclipse you, at a figure they did not realize they were going to have to bid -- and you're giving them time to figure that out by bidding your max early. And even if they don't eclipse you, you're giving them time to react to your ceiling bid and erode what would otherwise have been a much better price for you.
That's why I do it. I don't want the people I'm competing with for a card to have any information about what I am planning to bid until it's too late for them to respond with a higher price than they initially thought they were willing to pay.
Obviously this works to keep prices lower across the board. If sniping was profitable to eBay, they would build it into their software. You can safely assume that they don't encourage sniping because it loses them money. Thus, sniping is bidder friendly.