If 8 of the item I want to buy are finishing tomorrow....

[duke748]

What should my strategy be?

I am looking to buy 3 of a particular brand of stair gate, so unless broken, it doesn't really matter which one I get. None are near me, so I'll have to pay postage.

8 of them are finishing tomorrow. What should I do? Bid up to the highest price I am prepared to pay on each one just before it finishes? Would an hour before be OK, or is there much to be gained by bidding at literally the last minute?

Should I do each one as it finishes, or bid for the cheapest one?

Any hints and tips would be gratefully received. DS started crawling on Wednesday and is already in all the places he shouldn't be!

Thanks in advance

for best chance at lowest price bid the highest price with 7-8 seconds to go, if your internet broadband prone to be a bit slow 15 seconds, if have been on ebay all day sign out and sign back in as you dont want to be asked for password at crucial moment, set your max privce on paperearlier so if one goes too high you can just delete from wish list

you can set up snipes to do this but you enter max price for all 8 then instruct snipe to only buy 3 so you might get 1,2 3 or 2nd 5th and 8th

I am signed up with gixen and it can do this for you (as sarah described).

If you only want 1 item you shouldn't bid on all 8 at the same time in case you win more than 1 of them - unless I am mistaken and you want 8 items, in which case try and bid in the last few seconds, 10 or less if you have the nerve, or of course by auction sniper.

Hi all,

Thanks so much for your help. I have started using Gixen but I couldn't figure out how to only let it buy 3 out of the 8. I can see you can put them in a group and only let it buy one of those, but how do I set it to 3?

I think I might have to up the amount I am prepared to pay for them as they keep going for between £5 - 30 more than my highest bid. And its always at the last minute!

Will keep going and update you all if you want.

Thanks again for your help.

In Gixen you need to choose settings. Then scroll down and you have the option to set for each bidding group how many you want to win before it cancels your remaining bids.

I don't know if you have to purchase Gixen membership to do this or if it is one of the basic features.

Have you checked that you can't get them cheaper on Amazon? I sometimes find that people pay more than they should on ebay because they assume it will be cheaper. (Sorry if this sounds patronising, but it is worth checking.)

Hi all,

I got all three I wanted today, within 7 minutes of each other, I couldn't have done it without Gixen, so thanks very much for the suggestion.

Thanks for the Amazon tip - they are not distributed in the UK at the moment, which might be pushing up the prices on Ebay. Whatever, I still got them all for less than all 9 of the others I have watched have gone for - so I'm a happy girl. Just got to install the bloody things now!

Thanks again for your help.