Being sniped can be frustrating, no doubt, but as someone who has sniped, been sniped and also bid things up the slow and early way, it's hard for me to agree with the virulent anger that sniping brings out among many.
Sniping isn't prohibited by eBay and is in fact common. As long as it's allowed, he who gets beat by a snipe has nobody to blame but himself. It's not sneaky or underhanded -- shill bidding is sneaky and undehanded. But refusing to use all the tools given you as a matter of some Zen principle that a huge percentage of eBayers don't apparently care about verges on the self-destructive.
It strikes me that a reasonable bidding philosophy is to bid the minimum on an item if there are no bids on it, because that's the lowest possible pric e it can go for. But once a bid is on it, there's no sense in bidding until the tail end, as you are just driving the price up needlessly. The only other time to bid is at the end. That's when everyone else is likely to bid . Of course, if you can't or won't be by the computer at the end, sniping programs help you be there virtually. And if you're going to use a sniping program, why would you set it to snipe hours ahead of time?
Fine, one may argue, but perhaps the best thing is to just put your highest possible price in at the outset and hope for the best? If we were truly rational beings, that might work fine, but since we are not (how many times have you found yourself bidding above your "limit" in the excitement of the end of an auction), putting your top bid in well in advance is, in a sense, an invitation for someone else to get caught up in the excitement and bid up, or even exceed, your highmark.
By bidding late, and incrementally, you essentially protect your high water mark, shielding it from the emotional runs that other bidders are likely to go through.
And it's a strategy that's not just applied on eBay. Look at Wall Street. Firms make last minute M&A bids all the time. Rarely do they just come in with some huge offer on the first day and find that one standing when the dust has settled. Just like you bidding on a vintage crankset, the information an M&A specialist has is probably not markedly superior to that of any other interested parties, and thus your guesses on value (e.g. pricing) are assumed to be as educated as anyone else's.
So by hiding your hole card, in essence, you are protecting it from (a)unpredictable pyschological phenomena and (b)the risk that someone else has better information than you. You are also taking advantage of the fact that your rivals may in fact be asleep at the wheel, and forget to bid (it happens to all of us) or don't have as good information as you, opening the door, late, of opportunity.
I know I sound like Gordon Gekko here (and believe me, I hate the Gekko way ) but the point is that if you're going to willingly participate in a system, you should act in a self-interested manner. Because that's what everyone else is doing. That's why critiques of athletes or entertainers making too much money don't hold water -- who in their right mind wouldn't ask for the most money they could get from their boss? If someone offered you $250 million to play baseball, wouldn't you take it?
If you don't like the system (a valid point of view), then work to change its rules.
My two cents.
Ken Bensinger,
Brooklyn, NY