Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Marketplace => Topic started by: TjLaZer on December 28, 2005, 07:52:15 AM
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WTF is the point of always bidding low on ebay? Especially on Amiga items? I don't get it. I always see the same old people humbly placing their ~$1 bids. Whats the point? Don't you know you will be outbid!?? Is this their form of entertainment or something? Maybe someone can explain this to me! (I can see placing a small bid then sniping it later, but these people always bid low like lightning is going to strike them or something and they are actually going to win it at $1.) :roflmao:
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I'll bid low on items just so it's tracked for me. That way if I feel like it later on I can either bid again or shake my head at how high the price got to (this applies to a lot of things on eBay).
$2400 for an XBox 360? What are some people on crack? They couldn't wait 14 days for them to be at all the retail chains for $450? A buddy of mine bought two at FutureShop for $450 each (Canadian) and sold them on eBay 3 days later for $600 each... then he went back to WalMart and bought another one for his kids (so basically he got an xBox 360 for $150 for Christmas).
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i guess they are just hoping, that everybody misses the auction. i think this could work on other stuff, but not on amiga stuff. there are always people searching for a way to spend a lot of money into useless amiga things ;)
(i must confess, that i once got a aga color video digitizer for EUR 1, but i think this is a once-in-a-life-time experience - never used it since the 1st test anyway ;) )
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TjLaZer : I know what you mean, I also often see the same bidders on my auctions when they have just been offered on Ebay. But I have also seen objects being sold for 1 or 2 Euro with only one or two bids placed 8 days before the end .. some people really hope they´re gonna be lucky. I have also placed bids days before the ending and won it, but I can assure you that those were prices higher than 50 Euro, and if I win it I´m not gonna tell the seller that I just do this for fun and don´t want to pay it :lol:
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Because of Ebay, amiga hardware stuff has become way too expensive. It will be the death of the classic amiga if this goes on.
The bad effect is, though i am not willing to sell my own hardware expensive, i am forced to do so because i have myself to spend a lot of money to buy amiga hardware i need.
Not cool!
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Supply and demand, people.
It's not because of eBay the prices are high, it's because of people being willing to pay a lot of money for hardware they've been looking for, usually for a long time.
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A logical explanation can be that most Amiga users are adults, have a job, have a life, and are able to spend more money than students of 14 years young .. no offense to those that have that age ...
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As its always been said its a supply and demand thing these days with amiga hardware, and not even just hardware I seen an advert for 40 boxed games on ebay.co.uk £180 including P+P. 40 Games Link! (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMIGA-MONKEY-ISLAND-2-40-MORE-ORIGINAL-BOXED-GAMES_W0QQitemZ8247873820QQcategoryZ98929QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)So we have 2 options when we need newish hardware 1)bid low and win nothing 2)Save up afew paychecks before buying any amiga hardware off ebay. The only way I see to pay a fair price on amiga hardware these days ,is if we buy it through each other who are not wanting to make alot of money on there amiga hardware but just want a fair price. Its like a BPPC 060/240 I bidded on ebay no-one else bidded so I put the first bid in off £300 but ebay took the start point as £150 and then i watched people trying to outbid me by £10 so it finally took 6 days for me to be out bid. so the question was why do people bid low and All I can think of is to save money which im sure once in a blue moon will work.
Well thats my 2 pennys :-D
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If you want to have a low end price then bid the last moments and not 9 days in advance. I have also placed bids three days before the end and won it, but mostly I got outbid :lol:
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Hi,
I usually "Watch this item" then bid late. There is no point artificially inflating the price yourself.
I have watched things forgot to bid and they have gone unsold whereas if I had bid just £1 I would have won!
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I've been amazed at items going for more on ebay than you can buy them new at Software, etc. I'm talking about a scan-doubler specifically. It's really difficult (or impossible) to get Amiga bargains on ebay.
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ebay prices being so high could be a good thing in a way. if your a1200 with accelerator is worth 150 bucks on ebay you are much less likely to toss it. pc equipment especially 10-15 yrs old stuff is far more likely to be tossed because it is worth so little. a 25 mhz 486 pc is worth maybe 20 bucks, but a 25 mhz 68040 a4000 is worth a bit more.
this works to keep amiga hardware in circulation, rather than recycling.
i have several friends that are pretty serious about pc gaming and think nothing of buying a new 300+ dollar each video card, memory and processor and 100 to 150 dollar motherboard every 6months to a year. i think im as much an amiga fan as they are pc fans. in 2005 i spent about 300- 350 dollars on amiga stuff.
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Thats a very valid point KThunder :-)
Remember before bidding on ebay to check amibench or place a WTB advert here. cause someone will have something for sale :-D
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Well, you have surely seen on this very forum some people saying "why would i sell to you a fair price while i can sell for a bunch of money on ebay?"
I wanted to buy a 2060 board for my A2000 and was ok to pay 200 USD with shipping. 200 USD is already some money for a 15 years old hardware. But we haven't reached any agreement as it would certainly sell more on ebay. Pity! I am a real amiga user, i mean i actually use the hardware i own. I don't want to stock hardware for money value operation or some pointless collection.
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why would i sell to you a fair price while i can sell for a bunch of money on ebay?
Sorry I have'nt seen such a reply on this board, Im not saying it doesnt happen, I just have'nt seen it. From the adverts I have seen on this board from people such as Effy and x56h34 as afew examples there prices seem fair, and in some cases very fair compaired to what they could of got for it on ebay.
X-ray started a post here off people that have sold Amiga related equipment kinda a feedback like ebay but not quite here (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12351)
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I think the fact is, that some people have the patience to wait six months or even a year, maybe bidding on and losing a handful of auctions until they get the item at the price they want to pay.
This won't work with items that have big demand, like PPC cards, but you might be able to wait, and I mean WAIT, for one with a more reasonable price - the price that is the 'best of a bad bunch'.
As to people selling items on ebay and getting ridiculous prices for them - as I've said before, "We all gotta pay the rent" - that's pretty much the only reason I would sell my stuff...
[of course there are people in it purely to make money as well, i.e. they buy and sell]
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Xanxi wrote:
Because of Ebay, amiga hardware stuff has become way too expensive. It will be the death of the classic amiga if this goes on.
The bad effect is, though i am not willing to sell my own hardware expensive, i am forced to do so because i have myself to spend a lot of money to buy amiga hardware i need.
Not cool!
eBay is going to cause the death of the Classic Amiga!!! The fact that because old antique hardware that can never be manufactured again is rising in value because it is becoming harder to find in good working order, couldn't have anything to do with the prices going up. Nostalgia from continuous or previous Amiga users, or curiosity from people who have never seen or owned an Amiga wanting to find out why some of us are still passionate about using and preserving our Amigas, couldn't have anything to do with prices going up. It is all an evil plot by the webmaster at eBay to prevent the Amiga from making a come back and taking over the Computing world!
Forgive me for LOL, but I almost fell out of my chair when I read the above. At least I got to start the New Year with a laugh. :lol:
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I meant prices won't be so high without this auction site.
In a regular offer/demand direct market i am pretty sure people would agree on generally lower prices.
Happy to make you laugh too :-D
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I have looked and looked... is there a clssifieds here on Amiga.org? :roll: Is is so obvious that I'm just glazing over the link? :crazy:
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@TjLaZer
some bidders use auto bidding program for ebay..(shareware) you set your maximum bid.. the program will bid for you whilst your not arround. so don't always assume a manual bid is happening!!
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Such an autobidding is meant to keep the price as low as possible so no other can place a higher bid. I have read auctions where sellers say "no snipers" because that way the end price will not be hign enough.
An example : seller Mr_Greedy sells an A2000 with a starting price of 1 USD. He has a friend or another account which is meant to raise the price as high as possible and waits for buyer Mr.Goodguy to place a bid of, let´s say, 30 USD. Mr_Greedy thinks it´s too low so he bids 35 USD hoping that Mr_Goodguy will raise his price too to get that A2000 and places a bid of 40 USD ...
Let´s say Mr_Goodguy wants to save money and uses such an autobidding program, also known as sniper, and has it placed a bid 5 seconds before the auction ends. Think you know as well as I do that Mr_Greedy has no more time to place another bid to raise the price, does he ?! :)
So autobidding is a good way to get something as cheap as possible :lol: It´s a bad thing for sellers but that´s not your problem. And yes, I too sell things and I too see who uses a sniper or not, but I don´t mind as this is part of Ebay :lol:
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Erol wrote:
@TjLaZer
some bidders use auto bidding program for ebay..(shareware) you set your maximum bid.. the program will bid for you whilst your not arround. so don't always assume a manual bid is happening!!
I'm going to have to find where I can get one of those auto bidding programs (sniper), as I am not as active on eBay and am tired of trying to win a bid by waiting for the last 10 seconds to enter the bid to find out my connection did not send it in time and the auction is over. I have put in some fairly high bids days in advance on some items, but on almost all of those was out bid in the last few minutes.
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http://www.justsnipe.com/
That is the one I often use when I am not at home or sleeping (?) in bed. If you are not registered you can do, I think, 5 snipes a week and it will be placed 30 seconds before the end of the auction. If you want to register then it will cost you a lousy 5 USD a month which is peanuts if you plan on buying a lot :lol:
But there are more services or programs avaliable from which some of them are totally free of any charge. :rtfm:
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I use Auctionsniper (http://auctionsniper.com/). From their website..
New users are not charged for the first three auctions they win using Auction Sniper. Thereafter, we charge only 1% of the final auction price with a minimum fee of US$0.25 and a maximum fee of US$9.95 for only the auctions that you win.
Auctions in Euro, Pounds, Australian Dollar, etc. are converted to US $ before charges are applied. You can pay by credit card or paypal. Quite often my maximum bid is exceded, but they only charge you on the ones you win. Very useful, just got a thinkpad floppy drive for $.99, mind you shipping is close to $11. Don't forget to factor shipping into ebay prices to determine if it's cheaper than you can get it locally. :-D
Oh, and if you join, tell em aardvark77 referred you. :rtfm:
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amigadave wrote:
I'm going to have to find where I can get one of those auto bidding programs (sniper),
You can try www.justsnipe.com, it's free for 5 snipes a week. There are many more, but that's the one I can remember right now. It was in a PC Magazine a few months back. Seems alright, not great, but alright.
-David
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And the 5 USD you pay to Justsnipe.com are for a whole month, no matter if you snipe 30 times a day or 1 time every 30 days, no matter if you have a 2 USD snipe at a copy of Workbench 1.3 or a 1000 USD snipe at a collection of five Amiga4000´s :lol:
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I was half joking about getting a sniper program, but seeing how many of you know about them, and/or use them, I guess I should sign up for one before I make any other bids on eBay. Thanks for all the replies. :-D
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Hey, that´s what this forum is all about, to help eachother :banana:
One little detail if you or other guys want to use a sniper. Don´t get tempted by the thrill by having placed a bid the last second or last two seconds. It may work just fine but due to a delay on the net you can also get an error that the sniper program was not able to do the snipe. This has also happened to me and I didn´t win the auction, even though my bid would have been higher than the one who won the auction. :boohoo:
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Xanxi wrote:
I meant prices won't be so high without this auction site.
In a regular offer/demand direct market i am pretty sure people would agree on generally lower prices.
You are right, most of the Amiga stuff that was around would already be in the trash. Less people would be involved with the existing user base, so the price would be less. I'm sorry you can't get prices you want, hobbies cost money. If you are willing to bid a price you want to pay and wait you will get what you want on e-bay. It just takes time. (Took, me forever to get a Picasso IV.)
Mike
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The only problem with snipe programs is you have to give up your ebay password to the snipe engine; a shaky prospect to say the least. Also a snipe, as effy says, is not guaranteed because you can get out-sniped by engines that drop bids in single digit seconds. So the best (and safest) method is to just use ebay proxy bidding at your best price. If out bid, then so be it because it sold for more than you wanted to pay anyway, another item will come up again. Peace of mind and less hassle, IMO.
mdivancic wrote:
Took, me forever to get a Picasso IV.)
Mike
BTW, there's a PIV on ebay now.
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Hello All,
Amiga is more than computer it's investment if prices are
high now.Wait for the next 5 to 10 years! :-)