to sit up until 4:30 this morning just to win an ebay item?

[thumbwitch]

It's my own fault. If I'd got up at 6am this morning I could have got the same item from a different seller - but since I missed it, I've now got to stay awake until 4:30 to try and get this one. It's currently 01:44am here - so just under 3 hours to go.

What's the betting I fall asleep just before 4:15?

caught you are less likely to get caught in a bidding war if you bid late and bid your max.

How does a sniper differ from just putting in your maximum bid ? Do you end up being able to get the item cheaper ?

Quite often you do as people will put in a bid but if it's not high enough or you put in a later, higher one then they will increase theirs. If you don't bid until the last few seconds then they don't get the option to do that.

Of course there are people who manually bid or pay for a last couple of seconds auction stealer who will get in later sometimes but as long as you put in your maximum bid then it makes no difference. Also it stops you being tempted to bid higher than you really want to.

I did it! Thank you ladies, I got my toy for DS - not too expensive either.

I have always manually sniped before now, not being aware of these options - usually in the last 2 minutes, and yes, on one item if I had just put in my original max bid I would have lost it, but because I was sniping I decided to up it in the last few seconds and just got it.

Morticia - goofbay does it in the last 5 secs so if you come up against a goofbayer, you'll lose, just to let you know.

Glad you got your toy thumbwitch and thanks for the explanations of a smiper, I'm not sure that I fully understand but high p & p charges have put me off ebay atm.

Yaaaay Thumb