Good day,
I have lost my last 3 Star Wars items on auctions at eBay at the last second. So freaking frustrating. I researched it and I guess there is a thing called sniping. How do you get around this? Not only frustrating but makes you pissed after reading about it. Literally the last 2 or 3 seconds.

Any thoughts please let me know.

Also, do people or can people run up the costs on items for someone to pay a higher price? I kinda sensed this on a Tie Inceptor and stopped budding.

Thanks for your time,
Mike

Hi Mike,

As you mentioned thee are sniping tools out there that people use to bid for them in the last few seconds but to be honest this is what a lot of eBay buyers do anyway.

I've noticed over the years on eBay that the bidding on items always tends to get the most action in the final 15 seconds or so and I know I always wait until the last few seconds myself to bid as you are trying to have the last bid in there so that people don't have time to think over on the price. It's just the way it is and as everyone for the most part does this it's just the name of the game.

Sorry to say this but it always happens on desirable items and Star Wars collectables are so hot right now that people seem to be jumping on anything.

My advise to you is to wait until the end before bidding or sometimes you get lucky and come across something that there's no real interest in.

Best of luck with it though and I'm sure you will get what you're after in the end,

Ian

And yes, people either bid on their items themselves with sock puppet accounts or have others do it for them. It is called shill bidding. Some find the practice completely acceptable, I find it deplorable.

comicalUser wrote:

And yes, people either bid on their items themselves with sock puppet accounts or have others do it for them. It is called shill bidding. Some find the practice completely acceptable, I find it deplorable.

I certainly agree with you that shill bidding is far from acceptable. If a seller doesn't want their items to go for less than a certain amount then they need to either start the auction at the minimum price they want or put a reserve on it (even though the reserve option is a bit odd to me).

If you put something up on eBay with an auction style listing then you really should just let the potential buyers set the price and that's that.

Ian