Always bidding low on ebay

[nasty]

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

[Cyberus]

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]

[amigadave]

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:

[Xanxi]

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

[giZmo350]

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:

[Erol]

@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!!

[Effy]

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:

[amigadave]

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.

[Effy]

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:

[aardvark]

I use Auctionsniper.  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:

[dnelsonfl]

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

[Effy]

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:

[amigadave]

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

[Effy]

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:

[mdivancic]

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

[K7HTH]

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.