"DoN. Nichols" writes:

On 2009-02-17, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" writes:

When I (really my wife is doing the bidding since she has the
account, I am simply doing the selecting and providing the money) am
interested in something, I decide what it is worth to me -- usually
with a bit of a fudge factor to make sure that I am above people bidding
an even amount), and try to get that bid in as close to the last minute
as practical with the current net response time.

[ ... ]

I use a sniping tool called jbidwatcher. I decide what the item is
worth to me, set a snipe to go off a few seconds before the auction
expiration, and try not to think about it until after the expiration.

Great! I tried another sniping tool some years ago, and it
failed me when eBay played games with the format close to the last
minute. Not long after that, the author gave up trying to keep track of
eBay's changes. I suspect that it might be easier to make it more
adaptable in java, which jbidwatcher is written in -- which also means
that it happily runs in my Solaris as well as the more "popular" OS's.

In fairness, jbidwatcher went through a period when it was useless for
exactly that reason. I'm not clear on whether somebody else is
maintaining it now, or if the author caught up and ebay hasn't played
silly games for a while, but it's worked for me.

I sort of wonder why ebay hasn't published an API. It isn't like
sniping is uncommon, or like they're playing games frequently enough
to be seriously trying to defeat the snipes.

I say this without researching if they've actually published an API
since I last checked...