In Buy/Sell/Trade

Allright, I bet everyone here has bid on a game on ebay. You have all seen the prices, but question is, who are the people driving them up? I mean, I just lost an auction for 6 games, SIX games. The games were Duckhunt, wrecking crew, ice climbers, Excitebike, Gyromite, and Rad Racer (I think). In ended up around 26.00. What drives these people to do this, thinking there getting a great deal?

Well maybe the person kept bidding on them because they want to get a famicon adapter. 5 of those games are ones that could possibly have it, so it makes for pretty good odds.

Some people believe that it is the seller using another account to drive the price up, or a sellers friend doing the same.
And, some people are stupid and pay too much.

I've often wondered about "who's really bidding".

Quite awhile ago I really wanted Athena. I saw an auction that was going to end in a day so I put in a modest bid. Even though there were tons of other carts up some jerk had to keep raising this perticular cart's price up.

I think this bidder was someone who likes to light cigarettes with $20 bills.

Seriously, I'm not going to pay $12 plus 5.99 shipping for this game (especially when I think I'm the only person in the world who even likes the game).

And if it is a friend bidding some of these items up, it's a gamble.

I usually just get sniped.

I usually snipe.

One not so minor reason might be something like this.
Somebody sees a game he's mildly interested in for a low price and somebody already has a bid on it. Under normal circumstances he would not bid, but he doesn't want anybody else get the game for a low price.
How do you call that? Envy? Malice? Something along those lines. To grudge somebody else a good deal.

I really like the last reply. It could also simply be someone with a really bad gambling problem, or just someone obsessed with a game. I wanted to get my hands on a copy of Namco Museum 2 so badly on eBay once I bought two copies just so I could play the arcade Mappy, and have one for backup.

I used to ebay by the "rules". I would see a game I wanted and decide waht it was worth to me (like $20) and would then enter a max bid of 22.53 or some odd number about 10% higher than I was willing to sepnd (so I wouldn't lose it if someone else bid $20.01) and would get mad when people would start bidding against me by $1 increments until they were "winning" the item. Sometimes I even think that these were the listers themselves having people "shill bid" their acutions up (if you think someone is shill bidding, let ebay know and they'll get banned).

Now I just snipe, I like , it's free for occassional use, but well worth the $30 for a premium account if you're an ebay junkie like me.

Is "sniping" when you outbid someone on an auction with next to no time remaining in order to ensure that they can't place another bid?

That would be it.

Some people think of sniping as a morally gray area, but I don't see anything wrong with it (now that I use it) I'm sure you know someone who keeps checking ebay every couple of minutes or seconds until; their item ends to make sure they are still winning. Sniping is cool because lets you enter the price you are willing to pay and then go have a life away from your computer.

I've bid up tp 40 items on ebay, everything from games to systems and I got tired of the prices! I can buy games here from the local pawn shops for $5 a piece and I was hoping to be able to get them cheaper than that on Ebay but I was wrong, even bidding on wholesale or large lots of games the prices just kept going up and up.

And don't get my started on systems. I remember when I used to be able to get a system on ebay for $5 plus shipping, not to get one under $30 plus shipping is rare! I knew I should have bought the system in the pawn shop but he wanted $180 for it plus 30 games.