Ignoring shill bids, I’ve always wondered what compels buyers to bid up the price of cards well before the auction ends. I for one never bid on an item until the last 10s or so and it seems like a self-defeating habit to do otherwise. Of course there are people who can’t be there at the auction end and put in their max bids early, but this is a small proportion of bidders and I see most cards near market value days before the auctions end.
Purely speculation but the only logical reason I could see is that someone is willing to pay market value and there isn’t much availability for the card and they might want to discourage others from trying to snipe it. If I see a card that’s already reached a high bid with several days to go, I don’t even bother watching it or attempting to bid.
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With stuff like PWCC, about 75% of the time, especially for less-popular cards, I just go through the lot when it comes up and put the max price I’m willing to pay for everything. Remember that if you bid $100 on a card currently at $10 it doesn’t take it to $100, it just takes it to whatever the previous highest bidder’s max bid was. I don’t really have time or patience to be counting down the last minute on every card I bid on <$500.
[E] here’s a perfect example. Last month I purchased seven PSA 10 old ex cards from PWCC ranging from $60-85. I probably bid on around twenty <$150 PSA 10 ex cards from that lot. I don’t have time to watch them all end on different times. I’d be staring at my computer doing nothing else for an hour. If it was a more expensive auction I would watch the count down but otherwise no.
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I sometimes throw in a bid so I get an extra push notification from the app when the auction is about to end.
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I did this for years as a standard. I didn’t start watching listings for probably the first 5 years.
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For a fleeting moment I can experience happiness
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That’s exactly why I do it sometimes, only if it’s still at a low price that’s bound to go up! If it’s near its true value, I just keep an eye on it
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One main reason for me would be if an auction ends in the middle of the night, like between 2 and 6 o’clock at night for example (which happens pretty often, since 02:00-06:00 in The Netherlands is about 20:00-00:00 in the mid of the US if I’m not mistaken), in which case I just bid my max bid and hope for the best when I wake up in the morning.
Greetz,
Quuador
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Never thought about it this way. I’ve had sellers increase the starting auction price on items with watchers & no bids. I’ll bid to lock in the starting price. Some sellers are reluctant to end an item early with bids.
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Was just going to say this.
Not only that, but sometimes, auctions have a Buy It Now option, so placing a bid right off the bat (even it’s just $0.99) will eliminate the possibility of another buyer coming in and clicking BIN.
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To save time. To take emotion out of it. To avoid a canceled listing. To not miss a snipe due to forgetfulness or error/lag. To make all the folks who think they’ll get a smoking deal via snipe sad.
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I often miss auctions by not putting my max bid in and forget about it and I wake up the next morning seeing some auctions ended while I was sleeping. This happens almost weekly but hey at least I save money that way 
Anyway with auctions I’m hoping to get something lower than most BIN listings so when I see an auction already has high bids I might stop watching it.
I’m a slave I know
Sounds like a fair few of you haven’t heard of GIXEN. I use that all the time now when I’m bidding on items which end at awkward times.
For me if it’s a card I really want I’ll use GIXEN or sit on the auction page during the last 5-10 minutes. If it’s a card I’m not especially interested in but would fancy having in my collection I’ll happily chuck on a max bid in the event that I might win - this is typically an under market value bid ($50 on a $80 item, etc.), so the chance of me winning is low but I have no personal attachment to the card so it doesn’t matter if I lose out.
I haven’t used Gixen but if my understanding of Gixen is correct, how is that different from putting in your max bid let’s say a week before the auction ends? In both cases you’ll get the card for your max bid or you won’t and in both instances you don’t have to worry about the auction anymore.
You don’t give people time to think about if they want to add just that $10 more.
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Here are some advantages when you use Gixen instead of just putting your max bid in a week in advance:
- Immune to shill bidding: they can’t shill bid to find out your max bid and leave you exposed because you’ll be sniping
- No obligations: unlike your eBay max bid, you’re not tied to your Gixen bid, you can always just retract it
So why not give Gixen a try, right?
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With 99,5% of the auctions I bid on I just slam in the max price I wanna pay for it and see where it ends. If I get overbid; so be it. I placed my maximum price and stick with that. For the remaining 0,5% I use Grixen just to make sure I can place my final max bid at the last second. Sometimes it was enough, sometimes it wasn’t. That’s the gamble of the game. But I just don’t wanna be watching an auction all day long just to gain a few $.
Ah, now that makes a lot of sense. Gixen is in that case the (far) better option. Many thanks for clarifying.
PWCC and Gixen are like best friends, get gixen, pay for premium, bid on everything you like, try some bargains on under the radar stuff, sleep. Wake up --) profit!
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Another benefit of sniping last minute bids is the psychological aspect - if there are less people competing for an item, the more likely, at least I like to think, that they’ll relax on paying attention to the item the last minute. I like to manually snipe bids as I usually have a max in mind, but if I can put the auction up for a couple dollars more, I don’t see any reason to not since I’m not trying to make a profit. Just trying to collect. Granted, my collecting habits are a bit more niche so I have to be a bit more selective with what I’m looking for.