It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

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protek

protek

"Takai desu ne." -"Jinsei da."
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Do you ever get that feeling that, when you place a bid on something that hasn't got any previous bids and you almost instantaneously get outbid, that the seller might have someone to push the price up.

Take this Amstrad CPC6128 for example. I've been watching it for a week now at a local auction site. Not a single bid on it and ending in two days. So I couldn't wait any longer and placed a bid yesterday evening. Well, this morning my maximum offer had been outbid. Makes me really wonder, if I had waited until the last minute, whether that other bidder would've shown up.

As we can't discuss price here, let me ask it this way: is an untested Amstrad that has a crack on its case top worth going that extra mile or should I just let it be and try to find one here?
 
I'd say bid again if you're comfortable paying whatever it is you would be paying and you're prepared to accept a machine that condition :lol:

Personally i'd probably look around here if you're not desperate for the machine as you will possibly have more chance of getting a good offer at a decent price.
 
had that with a
UK Black New 4GB 4.3" MP3 MP4 MP5 Player 720P TV OUT Game console system
pertend psp thing from china. no bids then all of a sudden its at the buy it now prices, call me cheap but I`m not prepared spend that kind of money for one when I could get a second hand psp for that price
 
I always wait until the last minute before bidding. Doing otherwise simply raises the price. In fact, I use a bidding service so I don't even have to think about it. It also keeps me from upping my bid "just a little bit more".

:)

Heather
 
^+1 I never bid until there are 30 seconds or less left. :lol:

Just enough time to sign in again if it asks me, lol.
 
Its kind of a shame that online auctions have devolved into this metagame where you try to snipe at the last second... instead of just bidding what you are willing to pay.


but oh well, when in rome ... :)

I had an interesting experience on ebay a while ago, I was bidding on a lot of several fairly uncommon PC sound cards. The entire lot was going for less than the value of one of the cards alone. I put in a fairly low bid early, got outbid... nobody else bid on it, so I waited a few days for the auction to end, brought up the auction in the last 30 seconds... went to try and be a smartarse and snipe the auction, but then ebay came up and asked for me to sign in :o:Doh: in my rush I typo'd my password and by the time I got in, the auction had finished, and nobody else had bid :censored: went for an absolute bargain price. I was kicking myself.

But then the seller contacted me and said that I could have it for what I'd originally bid for.... :o

It was risky but I'd seen him on another forum so I thought he was legit and I did end up receiving the goods. I strongly suspect a case of shill bidding and it backfired on him, so its kind of a good thing I didn't snipe the auction.
 
I don't bid till the last minute either. Same happened to me this week. Had been watching a canon camera lens I've been after and it hadn't been named very well in its title. Lots of other identical lenses were getting bids but not this one. Waited until the last minute and bid, auction ended even before the page had time to reload, and found I had been outbid by 4 people. Must have been using some sniping software.
 
I'm the opposite, which is why I almost never "win." ;-)
I will generally bid early with my max, which is really low because I'm a cheap bast.... ...ion of will-power.. yeah.. that's it.. ;-)

Then, I rely on my REALLY BAD memory and forget about it.
If I get an e-mail a week later saying "You won," then I'm pleasantly surprised.
Otherwise, I've already forgotten about it.

:-)

desiv
 
another thing to look out for and a good indicator that shill bidding is going on is if you lose the auction/item and then a while later you get a second chance offer.
 
Before ebay payed Yahoo to stop their auction site (in the UK anyway) it was impossible to snipe on Yahoo. A bid in the last 10 seconds just increased the auction time by a minute.
 
scrappysphinx said:
I'd say bid again if you're comfortable paying whatever it is you would be paying and you're prepared to accept a machine that condition :lol:

Personally i'd probably look around here if you're not desperate for the machine as you will possibly have more chance of getting a good offer at a decent price.
Click to expand...

Joking right? Ebay is getting cheaper then here :thumbsup:
 
I think that bidding on Evil Bay is rigged sometimes. When I was looking for a 1581 i waited till within 30 sec of the auction ending.

The drive was for 5 day auction and had been sitting for xx for 5 days. I bid xxx as my max 10 sec before end and wham...... the drive sold for 50% more than 2 drives that were on auction with buy it now prices.

Why would you pay 50% more? made no sense to me and I think it was rigged. I hardly ever use Evil Bay because prices for Commodore stuff are outrageous and I was tired of being disappointed all the time. I do not have an unlimited budget and have to save up for everything I purchase and was just so tired of seeing things go for unbelievable prices.

I hate re-sellers. It ruins it for serious collectors. I have been lucky here so far :roll:
 
Trouble with Evilbay is that sellers seem to think things are worth your weeks wages just because theyre not in production anymore. :nuts:
 
I don't even bother with Ebay anymore, I just have my account still open to watch or take buy-it-now things, but auctions is a big no-no, prices are way over the top and not in a million years that I'm gonna pay that for any Amiga hardware! :mad:
 
Thanks, guys and gals! You helped me to make up my mind. I'm going to let it be and see how it'll turn out. I'm also more of an early bidder who puts his maximum. There are times, though, when it's a bit hard to stay on that maximum.

Gladly, I can always shop here even though the postage sometime tends to be murder. :p
 
I wait til the 10 sec countdown to bid and pick one price i wont go over and if i dont win it well tough you know what. I'll win it the next time if needed!
 
DetpaX said:
another thing to look out for and a good indicator that shill bidding is going on is if you lose the auction/item and then a while later you get a second chance offer.
Click to expand...

Yup...had that happen a few times! :blink:

goofbay sniper works well but as with any internet auction site only bid what you are comfortable with paying. My rule of thumb is whatever I am comfortable with plus a quid...so many times have I been outbid by 50p :mad:
 
Everybody uses sniping tools nowadays which ruins the auctions as everybodies bids all go in during the last minute, thus making it impossible to track auction activity. I've had far mire succes just putting in my highest price when I see the auction and seeing how it goes.

Can be quite funny to see the amount of bids going in last second when you've put in a high maximum price. 38 bids in one minute on the last item I won :D

Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk
 
Shill games

Shill games

DetpaX said:
another thing to look out for and a good indicator that shill bidding is going on is if you lose the auction/item and then a while later you get a second chance offer.
Click to expand...

This was a long while ago, but I was looking at a daughterboard on ebay.
The first time it was listed it closed with no bids. It was re-listed and I bid the opening bid which was the most that I was willing to pay. I was immediately outbid by two other bidders and it sold for several times my bid. Then I got a second chance offer that didn't look right so I declined. The same board was re-listed again. I decided to see what kind of game this guy was playing, so I placed the same opening bid as before, and the same thing happened. I declined the second chance offer again.
He re-listed it again and I again placed the same opening bid just to see how long he was going to keep this up and this time as the only bidder, I "won".
 
I had a re-offer with my first A530, was overbid good in the last 10 seconds and then got a mail from the seller relisting it as buy it now at my highest bid, took it right away, but that was the only time.

The crazy ones are Cyberstorm MKIII/PPC cards, these go way over even their original value and I still know the prices in DM.
 
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