I can see why people would get annoyed by sniping, and it always sucks to lose in the last seconds (happened to me more than once, even when sniping), but in my opinion it's a perfectly legitimate way to win an auction. Personally, I always found it strange that it never occurs to more people that whenever you have an auction with a fixed time limit, the most strategic time to bid would be in the closing seconds after everyone else has already shown their hands. And sniping is not a guarantee to win because you're still only bidding the max you're comfortable paying. I always put items I'm interested in on my watch list, and only snipe a bid if stays within my comfort zone. If there's a bidding war and prices escalate beyond what I'm willing to pay, I remove it from my watch list. Sniping does give you some advantage, but at the end of the day the person who is willing to pay more is the one who will win. I've lost more than one auction where I sniped in the closing seconds, only to have eBay inform me that I was outbid because their previous max bid was set higher than my snipe.



It's not just shills that drive the prices up though. Sometimes it is people who are new to eBay. I often see auctions where there's a frenzy of activity in the first day or so and the price for the item gets driven up really high. A lot of times, it's people with low feedback numbers, i.e., people who haven't completed many transactions on eBay. Honestly, that can be frustrating at times. Experienced bidders looking to land a deal will usually sit back and see the lay of the land, maybe place a low bid to test the waters before committing to a higher one, but that all goes to &%$# when new users drive the price up in the early hours.

They're using sniping software. Either bid your absolute max early or use sniping software yourself. I bid my max early. I win plenty of auctions. Sometimes I feel like I've been shilled though.

I never go to ebay for something I need. Instead, I treat ebay as a lottery of sorts. Whenever I have a few extra bucks and am looking for a certain type of "fun" item to buy, I go to ebay and look at what's ending in the next hour. If I see something I like enough, I'll try to "snipe" it.

Short of using sniping software (which takes away the fun and feels like cheating to me), this is the only way I feel I ever get a good value on ebay. Plus there's absolutely a thrill in the hunt, stalking your pray for a few minutes before pulling the trigger at the last second.

I rarely go to ebay for anything - the only thing that's Comics Related is that I brought the 7 Cards of the Original (Founding Members) JLA three years ago and I brought it from the seller directly without going through the hassle of the whole ebay experience.

I hate finding out something sold super cheap after the auction had ended. I used to search for Johnny Ryan Angry Youth Comix every single day. Nothing from the self publish days ever came up. Then I got busy and stopped. Next thing you know, someone on some message board posts that they just bought THE FIRST issue for $20, he was the only bidder. I don't know how low the print run was, but the later issues after he had become famous were typically 200-300. So I'm imagining somewhere between 50-100. What luck for that guy, but I'd have bid it up to $100 if I had known.

Same thing happened with the first volume of Elflord. I decided to check completed listings, and saw that I missed FOUR issues that sold for a total of just under $20. I'd have gladly paid $150 for that lot, and only that low because one of those issues I already had. It's the only issue I have, I paid $50 for it, and I had searched about five years for the opportunity to buy it at that price. My stomach dropped when I saw I missed my chance at that lot. Two of those issues are still available right now, for about $500 total Oh well, can't dwell on it, right? Just gotta keep looking, because the demand seems to be lower than I thought if a lot of four could sell that cheap. Sooner or later I'll get my chance.

I haven't bought anything on ebay for a couple years now. IMO the "golden age" of comic purchasses on ebay is dead.

The amount of actual auctions has steadily been decreasing in favour of "buy it nows" for quite some time now.

But more of a contributing factor to my abandonment of ebay are the ridiculous shipping prices that have emerged over the last few years for international packages. I am in Canada. It is not unusual for me see sellers wanting upwards of $30.00 to ship a single comic to north of the border. Crazy!

Unfortunately part of that is that US postal rates to Canada have nearly doubled in the last decade. When I was still doing ebay about 8-9 years ago I could send an priority package to Canada for $10 ish dollars and when the rate jumped to $14-15 I stopped doing international sales because it was insane to charge someone that much shipping for an auction that was a fraction of the cost, but I had no choice if it wasn't going to cost me money to have someone else "Win" the auction from me. The same Priority package now costs me over $20 to send, and the box I sent to antoine for the CCE which was slightly larger cost me nearly $40 for a couple dozen comics. Sending it non-priority is not much cheaper and you get no insurance or delivery confirmation, and if you add those back in, the cost is actually more than the priority rate. US Post office revenue was down and they lost a lot of business as e-mail replaced regular mail and other shipping companies took a lot of their business, and the one area they tried to make up for it was by jacking up international postal rates. I'm sure their costs are higher too, but I can't see the rate of increase those rates have undergone in a decade. 

-M