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Posted By: <b>Eric B</b><p><P>Is is just me, or is the Mastro action on the cards unusually heavy for this early in the auction?</P><P>Eric</P><P>&nbsp;</P><P>&nbsp;</P>

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>Omygawd.

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Posted By: <b>Robert</b><p>I agree now it seems that people are not waiting anymore and bidding right from the start. I noticed this on EBAY for the past couple of months. Before you would list a card and basically nothing would happen until you hit the 24 hour mark except for those $1.00 bidders who bid on everything. Do they really think they are going to win? Now by the last day anything that is good has reached its SMR or higher. On Mastro I put my Max bid in early, I figure the SMR and put a bid of 75% of the value so if I get outbid then it is usually by a collector and not a dealer because theere is no profit left for them. Just my thoughts...

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Posted By: <b>Hal Lewis</b><p>True Bresdo...<br /><br />but I wish that EBAY would allow some "straight" bids if someone wanted to bid a HIGH amount early on.<br /><br />Right now... I enter a high max bid... but STILL have to sit on my money and WAIT 10 days to see if I am going to win it or get sniped.<br /><br />I wish I could bid a high amount right off the bat (sometimes) and then if I get outbid with 9 days left... I could know that I am DONE and can move on to similar auctions.

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Posted By: <b>warshawlaw</b><p>C'mon Hal, you're one of those rich plaintiffs' lawyers <img src="/images/happy.gif" height=14 width=14> spring the few bucks for the sniper service. I place my "bets" a couple of times a week and forget about monitoring the auctions.

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Posted By: <b>jay behrens</b><p>I'm one of these people that bid on all the $1 cards. Of course I don't think I am going to win. I bid on them so I can track prices. I also generally bid more than $1 and on some occasions I win a card for a really cheap price. The msot recent example was a really nice DiMaggio Exhibit that I didn't expect to win and ended up getting for $20.<br /><br />Jay<br><br>I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: <b>Wesley</b><p>Are there sniper services for Mastro, REA, etc? I would love to snipe instead of staying up all night to bid.

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Posted By: <b>Bob Marquette</b><p>It used to be possible to go wire to wire on ebay by placing a fairly substantial max bid at the very beginning but people (myself included occasionally) are beginning to pay outrageous sums for cards lately, especially caramel cards. I couldn't believe that lot of 3 E98s on ebay went for $380+. One was poor to fair, the other 2 poor. I know they were second tier HOFers but still, that lot would have gone for $75 one year ago...

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Posted By: <b>quan</b><p>i like to look at the 3rd bid in cases with these unexpected final bids, which was $111. So you have a couple bidders who put in really high snipes thinking it'd never get that far and you got cards that went for triple of what it should. Wow!

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Posted By: <b>T206Collector</b><p>If you bid on an ebay auction at any time and in any amount before 30 seconds prior to the auction's close, you are wasting money. There is zero advantage to doing so. If you want to put a nominal bid in to "watch" the auction, I can understand that, although I prefer to just click the "track this item" link at the top of the auction listing.<br /><br />By putting in a maximum bid early, you are inviting people to bid into your maximum. If everyone only bid their maximum, it would make sense, but most bidder have no idea what their maximum is for an item, are disappointed when their so-called maximum isn't the highest bid and will bid higher than their so-called maximum to try to win an auction. This kind of bidding against oneself is only possible when people put in early high bids.<br /><br />If all bidders could collude and agree to only bid in the final 10 seconds, the final prices for items would diminish significantly.<br /><br />How wealthy do you have to be to put in a bid over $100 for something that doesn't end for another few days? Why are you giving people an opportunity to strategize about how to eat away at and perhaps ultimately defeat that bid? What benefit is there to losing money? I do not get it and I will never get it.

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Posted By: <b>jay behrens</b><p>The watch feature is nice, but you are limited to 30 items that you can watch.<br /><br />Jay<br><br>I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: <b>Glen V</b><p>Jay, I think you can watch 100 items on Ebay now.

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Posted By: <b>Mark</b><p>I wonder if the advent of sniper services has made most types of items cheaper or more expensive. It seems like some think snipers have made items cheaper, or at least would if everyone used them. But if people tend to enter their max bids when using their snipers, but don't enter their max bids when enterring in straight ebay bids (for fear of drving up the item price), I wonder if ebay items wouldn't be cheapest if nobody used snipers. In other words, without snipers, perhaps most people interested in an item would not enter in their max bid (for fear of driving up the price) unless manually bidding in the final seconds. And perhaps few people would be able to sit in front of ebay during the final seconds for all the items they are interested in winning as compared to the number of people who today manage to bid in the final seconds via sniper serivces. Less max bids could mean a lower price in a owrld without snipers, as it was in the old days.

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Posted By: <b>jay behrens</b><p>I've been on eBay since almost day one and snipering usually mean a cheaper price unless you get a couple people dropping in huge prices to ensure a win. Back before sniper services, most people just placed their max bid and never looked back. What this lead to was seller using shill accounts to fish for the max bid. They would use one account to find the max bid, then make a bit with another account to force the high bidder to max out his bid. In the early days of eBay, most people detested people that sniped auctions. Once they realized that they were getting things for less than if they just placed a bid early everyone started switching to sniper services. <br /><br />i can remember the early days and I was heavily into toys at the time and most toy collectors really frowned on sniping, but eventually everyone switched to sniping becuase that was the only way you were really going to be able to ensure that you got the item you wanted at a decent price without someone running up the bid on you.<br /><br />Jay<br><br>I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: <b>Howie</b><p>A lot of collectors now have more money than experience and really have no idea what they should be paying for things. All they figure is if they can pick it up for 1 bid more than what all the experts are figuring, then they can't get hurt too bad. So you bid $1000 on a $500 item and win at $500 plus one. The problem is when 2 or more guys like that all throw in their $1000 winners and end up bidding against each other thinking the other guy must know something. World record prices start flying.

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Posted By: <b>Wesley</b><p>I agree. It's one thing when people in the past went strong on top condition cards or super rare cards. That is understandable because the cards do not turn up that often.<br /><br />Now people are paying record breaking prices for cards from easy sets and cards in the most ratty conditions. Not sure what the urgency is since these types of cards are really not that difficult to find.

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Posted By: <b>warshawlaw</b><p>1. To avoid max bid phishing as discussed above. I had one particularly ugly incident before I started sniping where a person with whom I had a fight continually tracked my bids and purposely maxed me out. <br /><br />2. To avoid having ebayers who know me use my name in a bidder search to locate the cards I am tracking. <br /><br />I don't think sniping has any effect on prices. People program in the snipe sum they want to max bid and walk away, which is what they would do if they were simply max bidding on ebay. A hot item will draw massive fire. If anything, sniping keeps interest down in an auction from folks who maybe are not as adept at searching for stuff and who use your ebay name as a fishing mechanism if you bid.

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Posted By: <b>PASJD</b><p>No wonder I have had such a difficult time locating cards on ebay. Everyone must be sniping so I can't track what they are bidding. Maybe I'll have to rely on a word or category search and hope I am smart enough to find what interests me.

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Posted By: <b>Bottom of the Ninth</b><p>that you would not want some of the cards that some of us buy.

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Posted By: <b>PASJD</b><p>Greg that sounds like Groucho's old quote about not wanting to be a member of any club that would have him for a member. Something to it, perhaps, although everyone must be sniping so I can't even tell.

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Posted By: <b>robert a</b><p>Bob and Quan.<br /><br />As you probably know, I won the rediculously overpriced e98s the other day.<br />I was not thinking they were going to go even remotely that high, but put in an aggresive bid to make sure that I won them. I then noticed that someone with 0 feedback also put in a rediculously high bid.<br />Last time I do that.<br />The funny thing is that I could probably sell them again and make my money back. By the way, if anyone needs that orange e98 collins?<br />robert

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>setting my alarm clock for 3 in the morning to snipe a European item. Too hard on the on the psyche! as the seconds tick away, your heart beats faster and faster; sometimes the bid mechanism doesn't work on a real prize, and you don't get your bid in!---those were definitely NOT the days!<br /><br />If anything, I'm sniping lower than I used to when i did it in person--I'm not around to see if the price of something is approaching my snipe bid...

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Posted By: <b>Ted</b><p>Seeing that we have veered totally off topic, let me go one step further. <br /><br />I don't do a lot of buying on ebay, but have always done my own snipes during the last 10 seconds or so to keep my purchase prices as low as possible and prevent shadowing. I have never used a sniping service, but it sure would be nice to make some of those bids when it just is not convenient to be home. Can anybody with experience recommend good services, or warn of bad ones before I learn the hard way? Feel free to just email me with your thoughts.<br><br>Ted<br />He who so shall, so shall he who!

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Posted By: <b>Bob Marquette</b><p>The prices for the lots, at least the ones I am interested in, are outrageous! Wow, either people decided if they wanted to get a bid in to do it early or there will be some record prices on some cards. I particularly noted the E94 Young which is zooming past 7k already. There is a dearth of caramel cards in the auction but those that are there are getting a lot of attention. I haven't checked the pre-1900 stuff but I assume it is also going strong. Someone once told me the worse the economy got the better things were for the collectible market. The economy the last 3 years has stunk and prices have really risen to all time highs in our hobby. With 3 more years of a sorry economy ahead it looks to be a seller's market...