Help me understand......

Hey All,

I have been an ebay member since 1999 and have seen a lot of changes since then. One constant since then is snipe bidding, I understand why it happens and I do it myself! Heck I was snipe bidding in 1999 after a few lost auctions. In short you have to snipe bid to win.

Armed with that knowledge why would anyone place a bid on the first day of the auction?????? 90% of the bidding is done within the last 10 minutes of any auction and to bid before the last 12 hours only drives up the bids and ensures you will pay more than the item was worth or more than you wanted to spend.

Take a TD .010 for example. 6 day auction day one within the first 10 minutes the auction is advertized someone places a bid. They won't win it and it starts a snowball of stupidity and next thing you know a week later it sells for $90 for a used item. Is it worth $90? Maybe to some but, on any given day there are 5-10 TD .010's up for bidding. That tells me 1 they are not rare and 2 they are still very popular. So, why not wait and then pay maybe 40-50$ for a used .010? If you lose who cares there will be more tomorrow.

We are shooting ourselves in the foot! I used the .010 as the example as I see it as one of the worst offenders, but there are many examples of this with other cox engines as well.

Anyway, what am I missing? Why does this occur? Help me understand.......