And never ever bid

on e-bay until the closing minute.  I figured this one little coal car would not draw much interest, and I needed it to finish off my fleet of 40 ith unique road numbers, so i bid with 15 min to go.  I was top bidder for 23 seconds.  By the time I looked at the bidding, 2 new bidders had out bid me.  I let it count down and bid again at about 45 seconds and outguessed the previous high bidder getting it for .01$ more then he bid.

So gain, never ever bid before the last minute or so on e-bay.

Last second bit

I always search with a normal search engine to see more options than just ebay.

I never understood the philosophy of the last second bids. I determine how much I'm willing to bid and do it. Than I forget about the auction until it is over.

I have watched too many bidding wars even where a "Buy Now" option is offered. I offered an auction with buy now option. The auction prices were more than 50% higher than the buy now price.

Worst was a OMI DDA40X with a buy now price of $1,300 where the winner paid $1600 if I remember correctly. Regards, Volker
 

EZ Sniper is your friend.........

..........just put in the maximum amount you want to spend and forget it until the auction is over.  I started using this because a lot of the auctions were ending when I was asleep so waiting up to enter a "one click bid" at 5 seconds to go was not an option.

Also, I have bought a lot of my better stuff off forums.  This saves the seller $$ as there is no 10% eBay fee and they can take a little less than he might want and still make more than an eBay sale. 

If you list items for sale on a forum you must remember to add "plus shipping cost to your location" as some buyers will expect you to pay if you're not clear.  Not all, but some and you know who you are, right?

Peter

Latest possible bidding

Latest possible bidding using an automated snipe tool, studies have shown, almost always results in a lower price. Not great for the seller, but excellent for the buyer.

If you bid early, you give away your interest in the item, and you often trigger "fishing" behavior by others where they will repeatedly post bids in an attempt to out bid you. This kind of behavior quickly drives up the price, often beyond what you can buy the item for from a retailer.

Waiting until the last possible moment does not tip your hand and make counter-bid fishing behavior impossible. The minute you bid on something, that's like a red flag saying, "look at this, it might be valuable" which then draws others to start bidding.

Finally, never bid a round number like $20.00. That's what almost everyone does. If you bid something like $21.57 then you stand a much better chance of being the high bidder because the other 90% bid round numbers.

MRH did an article series in the May, June, and July 2011 issues where we discussed these strategies and more.

yup

Been at e-bay since 1996.  I always figure bidders at even dollars, so I add 1 penny to that when I bid. Works very well.  Back then your user id had to be your e-mail address, and you could not modify it to keep the same account when you changed e-mail addresses.  Now, you can't use an e-mail address as an account name (except when you can.  More than 1 person has figured out my e-mail address from my account name, just as I intended.)

Only problem with sniping tools is you have to pay to use them, which might use up more than you are saving.

Problem with e-bay anymore is the high use of paypal.  I find things early and e-mail the seller.  I still do not have a paypal account, and my e-bay account is old enough that it is 1 of very few that does not have a credit card attached to it.

Hit 3 of 4 auctions this weekend.  Outbid on the last 1 at the 5 second mark.  And have tagged 2 more copies of that item over the next week.

I only "buy it now" on ebay. 

I only "buy it now" on ebay.  and only if I believe the price is fair.

Most of my purchases have not been train related and have been for items I could not find elsewhere.  I use my credit card to pay.  Paypal processes the card for the seller.  You do not have to be a Ebay member or Paypal member to make the purchase.

My last purchases were two 1/35 scale military truck kits.  I could not find them at any or the well established hobby shop sites I normally check (both US and foreign ie,. German, Japanese, Hong Kong, eastern Europe) .  One dealer was in Hong Kong, the other in China. Both items arrived in less than a week, and the prices including shipping were in line what I would have paid elsewhere if they had been in stock.

A few months ago I bought a part for a tripod.  The maker of the tripod went out of business years ago.   The seller needed the same part so he made one for himself plus some extras to sell.  It arrived in a couple of days, and now I can use my tripod.

I have also bought some used books mainly from "goodwill" type stores. They often ask very low prices.  In many cases the price of the book was less than the shipping charge which is usually $3.99.

Some buyers seem to erroneously assume that bidding will always get them a lower price.  Both truck kits I bought went for higher prices on several other sellers auctions., 

I use Google as my primary search engine.  I have found that other search engines give more non-relevant results and are less likely to find what I am looking for.

don't be a victim of shill bidding

Another reason not to bid in advance is to avoid being a victim of shill bidding.

I once put in an advance bid on an item, which I won. There was only one other bidder, and just before the end of the auction they had put in a bid just below mine. As it was substantially more than the starting bid, and my bid was not an even amount, this seemed a little suspicious. I looked at some of the seller's other completed auctions and was surprised at how many of them had losing bids from the same account that had bid just below me. Clearly the seller was using a second eBay account to "add some competition" to his auctions.

I got the item I wanted at a price I was willing to pay, so I couldn't really complain. But it does seem rather dishonest and although I reported it to eBay, I never heard back from them. They have a policy against shill bidding, but I doubt they can do much to prove it or prevent it.

I've avoided eBay since then, but if I were to bid on anything, it would be in the last minute.

My Tactics

So far, everything I've wanted has been things that are oft cheap, but sometimes quite costly.  I'll put in a very low bid, and forget it.  Sure, it took me 5 tries to get the Lima Shay promotional business car--but I got it for under 10, including shipping.  Avoid the bidding wars, and you're fine.  The only time something came through that didn't work, the seller took care of it right away.  (He's track tested an old 0-4-0 switcher, said it ran fine.  Not being a train person, he didn't realize that something was slipping, and that it wasn't really running fine.  He made a good faith error and fixed things promptly.)

Well, not what I originally intended, but

a fine addition to my rolling stock today.  Some time back I put together (in my favorite RR - IC) a powered pair of Sw-7 Athearn units - Cow and Calf.  In turn, I had both units DCCed.  I would have settled for a dummy Calf, but didn't find one....  until today - I got a Cow Calf pair - both dummies.  With some shell swapping and work, I will have not 1, but 2 pairs of Cow Calf, with both Cows powered and both Calves as dummies.  Biggest change besides shell swapping is changing out horn hook couplers and renumbering the 2 new engines.  (oh and IC had 4 pairs like this, so I already know what numbers to use on the new engines.)

I also try and buy in lots

I also try and buy in lots from the same seller. For example if I am going to buy a freight car kit I will check the rest of the sellers stock and bid on several items. I can then save a good bit on shipping that way. I have a max price I will pay including shipping. I subtract what they are charging for shipping from my max bid if it goes past that someone else can buy it. If they have several of an item and have hit the make offer tag I make them an offer for the whole works. Sometimes they say no and the items do not sell. I then send in another offer on the whole thing and often I get them that way.

Works well when buying hopper cars or box cars for your home road and you know you will need to renumber them anyway.

This is why

e- bay is heading away from the auction format.  It is not really a classic auction if no one bids until the last second.      They seem to prefer the buy it now with best offer format.  The average sale time is less and the sale price is higher.   They stand to make more in less time per transaction.

Others, who are still using the on line auction with a fixed end time type format, actually are extending the auction.  In this case any bid during the last set time period extends the auction by an increment in time.  Any bidders are notified via text or e-mail.  The time continues to be extended with each new bid during the increment.  The auction ends when there are no further bids in the period.  I've seen them go on for a couple of hours.  And the price continues to go up with it.  This actually encourages bidding before the last minute, because of the communication and if no one bids in the last specified period the auction ends at the original time.

If e-bay keeps the auction format, I would expect them to move in that direction.