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Snipe strategies?

65 posts in this topic

After a year or two of losing auctions at the last second, a book finally came up for sale that I need to snipe. (Plus, I'll be out of town when the auction ends.)

 

I've signed up for a snipe serivce, but was wondering what the best delay time is in general. 3 seconds? 6 seconds? 2 seconds? What gets people the best results.

 

Also, what do you consider when determining what amount to set your snipe?

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Why do you guys want to still leave time for someone else to snipe you? 7 seconds is iffy at best and I've been beat even at 5. You really want to bid as close to the end of the auction as possible.

 

I use Auctionsniper set to 3. But, and it's a big but ( :cloud9:) , if there's a lot of traffic - which happens especially on weekends - their system overrides your set time to insure that your bid gets placed. I've had snipes set for 5 seconds that were placed at 15 seconds and then beat down handily. I've read that other folks here don't have this problem with BidNip, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.

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Why do you guys want to still leave time for someone else to snipe you? 7 seconds is iffy at best and I've been beat even at 5. You really want to bid as close to the end of the auction as possible.

 

Servers are slow at weekends, especially at peak hours. Those 2 seconds could cost you the item all together.

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Anything under 7-10 seconds is all the same. At that point in the auction either someone has already set thier snipe to go off and if it is higher than yours they'll win, whether you go 2seconds or 15seconds. Or they are refreshing down the last minute and 7-10 seconds is barely enough time to post a manual bid. The bottom line of the snipe is to sneak in at the end so no one else knows you are interested/watching, lulling then into a false sense of security and not upping thier bid.

 

and even bottomer liner - highest bid wins no matter when you bid

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and even bottomer liner - highest bid wins no matter when you bid

 

As long as it's an increment higher - I've bid marginally higher or the same as the winning bid in the past, but because my bid was later than that bid, I didn't win.

 

Doesn't even need to be an increment higher. You can win an auction by $.01.

 

If an item is sitting at $50 yet the high bidders has his max at $62.52 I can win the auction by sniping it at $62.53 or higher. If I snipe at $62.50 he will win with $62.52.

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Anything under 7-10 seconds is all the same. At that point in the auction either someone has already set thier snipe to go off and if it is higher than yours they'll win, whether you go 2seconds or 15seconds. Or they are refreshing down the last minute and 7-10 seconds is barely enough time to post a manual bid. The bottom line of the snipe is to sneak in at the end so no one else knows you are interested/watching, lulling then into a false sense of security and not upping thier bid.

 

and even bottomer liner - highest bid wins no matter when you bid

 

I place manual snipes under 10 seconds all the time. It's not that hard, just have another browser window open with the bid already entered. Refresh one window down to 5 seconds, open the other and hit confirm.

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