On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 18:51:53 GMT, xray wrote:
On 8 Jul 2005 18:22:17 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

Face it - you want to see how high it goes, and bid just high enough
above that to get it, without giving anyone else a chance to do the same
thing to you. If you claim that that's not your motivation, you're
either lying or delusional.

Are you primarily a seller?

About the same of both. How would that matter? It's either being done
to pay as little for something as possible without giving others the
chance to do the same, or it's not. Doesn't matter if I'm the buyer
getting edged out, or the seller getting shortchanged.

Face it -- my goal is to get something that meets or exceeds my quality
requirements for as little money as possible. Before eBay, I had a
couple of buys locally of equipment. I bought an electronic thingy for
$5 that was regularly going for $650. I didn't feel a bit guilty. I
assumed it probably was blown, so looked at it as a lottery ticket and I
won.

And yet, you didn't shove someone out of the way to buy it, did you?

Now with almost everthing like that finding its way to eBay, you are
fighting every bozo in the world who happens to be paying attention at
the time. In my opinion, putting out your max bid early, just tends to
give people time to get emotional and bid up the price to the max of
what it should be worth or (frequently) higher.

So, you're sniping to get the item as low as possible, without giving
somone a chance to outbid you. Yes, we've established that.

Do you ever watch the TV show "The Price is Right"? I bet when one
person says, "600 dollars, Bob.", and the next person says, "$601", you
go nuts. It's allowed, but it's JUST NOT RIGHT, damn it.

Well, haven't watched it in years, but yea, that's exactly the
asshole-ish behavior that sniping is.