I haven't bought many things, just one here and there. I have bid in at present on an auction which ends in less than two hours. What I want to know, is there normally a flurry towards the end of the bidding period? Should I sit watching it towards the end? I have bid in place and am currently winning but I guess that could all change.

So give me (and others) tips on being a successful ebayer.

What have you bid for, and won? What have you sold?

I haven't won anything yet, but from what I've seen, the bids can increase more than 50% in the last 4 or 5 minutes. I'd sit by the computer.

Yes, a lot of people wait until the end to see what the bidding looks like, and then watch an auction and bid at the last minute, often putting in proxy bids, so that even if you catch it in the last minute of the auction, you might not be able to outbid them in time.

This is, unfortunately, just a fact of Ebay life, and fr poor folks like me the easiest thing to do is just learn to live with disappointment. If a person has a little more means, and can afford to actually pay more (uh... maybe closer to what an item is actually worth...lol) then it might discourage other buyers from the beginning.

I have only brought and sold a few things on Ebay, and the "big" money usually comes in, on the last two minutes. It is quite a exciting feeling, to watch your item go from £75 to over £90 in a matter of seconds. You have to be quick!

Depends on what the item is.
Sometimes there is furious bidding and sniping (people wainting until the very last moment to bid so that they will not be out bid. There are even programs and websites that will do this for you.)

If it's something popular and you really want it, here's one technique. Open a second browser, have a bid waiting in one and keep refreshing in the other so that you can see when the bids change and enter yours at the last minute. That way you avoid the delay between seeing the bid and posting your own. A lot can happen in those few seconds!
I've only done this once, I don't usually care that much, but sometimes things are one-of-a-kind, and it hurts when you lose it. The thing I lost was a Salvation Army songbook compiled by my great-great-grandfather. I was outbid at the last second; I've never been able to find another, but I keep looking.

What is a proxy bid? I have left a 'maximum' bid, is that the same thing? My maximum bid is almost half as much again as my current winning bid and there is just over an hour and a half to go!

Presumably it is a good idea to bid on things where the bidding ends in the middle of the night, or doesn't that work?

I am not actually bothered if I don't get this item, although it might be nice.

Oh heck, I have just looked and my winning bid is only just under my maximum so it looks as if I will easily be outbid.

I have slightly increased my maximum and will go no higher, I don't want it that badly.

Like Taesma said, there are websites that will act as your bidding agent. You decide how much the absolute maximum amount is that you are willing to pay for a certain item, and enter it into the site with the item number. You choose at what point you want your bid to be entered (i.e., 5 seconds before the auction ends) The fee is very small - 1% of the selling price, with a minimum fee of 25 cents and a maximum of $9.95.
This is convenient if you are going to be away from home/computer at the time the auction goes off.
We have sold many items on Ebay, the biggest being an SUV that my husband inherited (we couldn't afford to keep gas in it!)

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Presumably it is a good idea to bid on things where the bidding ends in the middle of the night, or doesn't that work?

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If you can find them, it helps, but most people list things that end when they know the maximum number of people will be online shopping, for example just after the evening meal.

I use 'real life' auction rules and it is actually easier on ebay than at a real auction, to keep yourself from getting auction fever. I decide what the maximum that I am willing to pay is, and put that in as my maximum bid, right at the start. You don't have to show your hand - that is, if the item will go for less, then less is what you pay.
I purposely don't watch the last few minutes, unless I really am willing to go a bit higher. Otherwise, all I am doing is driving the price up, for no reason.

I won it with my original 'maximum' bid, with change over.

That maximum bid is very sensible.

Yay! Congratulations.

I love eBay - have bought and sold a few things and haven't had a bad experience yet.

Packets of chips recently had free 'tazos' in them and I had quite a collection of them so I decided to put the rarer ones of them up for auction and one went for $25 for something that was free. Yowsers! And gave people that bought them the choice of any of my plain ones they wanted, I was only going to throw them out eventually anyway. Got into quite a chat with one man who had five sons (!!!) and all of them wanted the whole collection - but he wasn't greedy and asked for 4 so I sent them along, he gave me glowing feedback and once they were all paid and for I sent the rest of what I had left to him. He was so happy and appreciative that it was all worth while.

I love ebay too - we have been members for years, and altough I wouldn't say we have NEVER had a bad experience, they are few and far between. Mostly with the kids buying stuff without checking the vendor's rating - they aren't allowed to bid anymore without one of us checking it first.

I haven't dared sell anything yet, especially as I've only had a digital camera since November, but all the hassle making the ad and paying fees up front have put me off so far. But the obscure stuff I've bought has been weird and wonderful. No bargains, I buy stuff I can't find elsewhere and am happy to get at all. I decide what I'd pay in a market and bid to my maximum and ignore trying to get a discount as 'it's only money'.

If I had to shlep half way across the world to buy a Japanese model car it would cost me a lot more, though I bought a sheet of old train tickets from just south of London once from a photo so small they were illegible. As it was a shop I trusted them and ended up paying about 10 times more than they were worth as most of the page was empty space when it arrived and the tickets were the sort you'd normally find in the bin. Mind you, I only spent a few pounds but they were worth pence. I haven't got many more things on my list but should it be impossible to get something on Amazon (besides one bad experience they are usually pretty good) or anything not book or music related I look on ebay. But the latest car model I wanted, the one we had when I was 17, the Citroen GS, has just been made again after 20 plus years for a reasonable price, but I doubt I can get a new one yet on ebay and so far haven't found a British site selling them. The postage from abroad is almost the price of the car so I'll be very patient.

Finally, does anyone remember the liquid crystal rainbow disks in the 70s onwards? The main one was the Wham'o Gizmo, but there were also Fingafun, Fingamajic and more recently touchstones. I had a couple but the backs came off and they were ruined, and have some baby ones now but still want a large red disk like I used to (the blue ones barely change colour which is all I have now). Who remembers them? Anyone want to sell one?

I've bought and sold on Ebay, and my sis and I have a vintage clothing and other stuff business that we run there. I mostly buy yarn and gemstones for my jewelry business, as they're typically much easier to get and better prices for harder-to-find cuts, etc. All depends on finding the right seller.

Edited to add: Satguru, are you talking about something like this?
http://www.elsewhere.org/tmp/wham-o/magicwindow1.JPG

We found selling really pretty easy - unless they have changed the system very recently you don't have to pay up front, I thought.
The hardest part was giving quotes for shipping costs to buyers, but even that we smartened up pretty quickly - just rounded it to a reasonable figure, and didn't bother runnning back and forth to the post office to get exact-to-the-penny quotes for every place. Most of our buyers are from the US, and we found that the difference in cost in shipping even a fairly big item between say New York and California is just pennies.

I bought a small electronic postal scale. They're pretty cheap, and it was definitly worth it for me even though it wasn't totally accurate. It saved all that post office wear and tear, not to mention time.

I haven't sold since they started requiring you to take credit cards through Paypal. It is just not worth it for me, the fees are unreasonable for the types of things I was selling. (I wasn't a business, just getting rid of extra stuff.)

The selling side isn`t one that I`m experienced in but I have purchased over 80 items from over 70 different sellers without a problem.

The following is a "formula" that I use when buying an item.

1) Decide what I`m looking for, I do get side-tracked into buying things I like the look of but I still adhere to the following for those items as well.

2) Spend half an hour searching the internet for the same item or similar items to get an idea of what the average price is if purchased in a shop or online.

3) Search eBay for the item.

4) Check out the feedback scores of the sellers and how long the sellers have been selling on eBay for. Check out if the seller has been selling similar priced items, if they haven`t it could mean that their account has been hijacked by a scammer and you will never see money again or goods ever, though that`s mainly for higher priced items.

5) I then choose a couple of sellers that have passed the above checks and then right click their names and check out their negative feedback using
Toolhaus which is an extension available for download if you are using Firefox. If the seller has been reasonable in dealing with problems they stay on my list of maybes.

6) I check out the postage charge wanted for the item. People do get burnt when they win an auction without a postage charge stated. You can always ask the seller what the postage will be before bidding.

7) When I finally decide that I would like to bid on an item I save it in my eBay page under items watched. Then I wait.

8) When the auction has less than 15 minutes to go I open up the listing page then open up the same listing in another page (like Taesma). I place the highest amount I will pay in the second open page and click bid. That action doesn`t mean that I have bid but it does take me to the bid confirm page which means I am only 1 click away from bidding.

9) By this stage I am really getting a surge of adrenalin, I can afford to though as I have checked everything out and am on safe ground. I go back to the first listing page I opened and reload it every couple of minutes, then as the time is counting down the periods between reloading get shorter. When I reload down to 10 seconds to go I go to the confirm bid page and count down to 2 seconds then I hit the confirm button!

10) Because I also have Yahoo Messenger running I generally get a message stating that I have an email from eBay regarding my latest win.

There are a few reasons that I only ever "snipe" on something I really want. A) It stops, to a fair degree, sellers bidding on their own auctions under different names and forcing the price up [shill bidding]. B) It helps to keep the price of items down because you don`t get caught up in bidding wars with other bidders. C) I get a real rush doing it.



This is my latest win using sniping. Note the time I placed the bid compared to the auction time left- by clicking "history". No-one had a chance to beat that and I got the item at a great price. I`m picking it up tomorrow.

Not the magic window Loth, that's full of coloured dust and apart from becoming jammed together mine is still intact after over 30 years. Mind you, it doesn't glow in the dark, and my coloured stuff is blue and black with the white to contrast. It's actually like little polystyrene balls with the coloured ones heavier so they rest on the bottom to make patterns.
The gizmo is a little disc about 3 inches in diameter filled with liquid crystals and you press the plastic film on the rear to make it change colour. They sold them again here a few years ago but when I decided to get one they'd stopped again. Davis liquid crystals were the last place on earth to make them and they stopped as well. They had various branches in the US but one in Wales who sent me a few as they were very nice people, but not the red or green discs.

I've been trying to purchase a mobile phone and it's driving me nutty! There's so many people out there who don't 'ebay' properly. If you see an item you like put it in watching, don't bid on it til the last few seconds. The phone I was after started off at ten pounds and because people were outbidding each other with hours to go the price shot up to over a hundred pounds! If only these people would hold off bidding early then put in a maximum bid in the last few seconds, one of the bidders will get a bargain, it's not rocket science is it!
I've had a dozen mobile phones in watching in the past couple of days and because of daft bidders all trying to outdo each other they all sold at shop price if not more, it's very frustrating

Actually, I think a lot of people prefer to put in a max. bid as soon as they've decided to try for an item, and NOT wait until the last second. That's usually called sniping, and most people I know don't like the practice. No offense. In any case, I wouldn't call it "ebaying properly". I have never done that, and I get a good deal on most of the items I've bid on. (Of course, that also comes from knowing what is worth buying on Ebay and what is not, as well as what actually IS a good deal for the stuff I'm buying.) The times I have problems winning auctions it's usually because I KNOW I'm bidding on an item that is WORTH much more than I can pay for it, and other people who want it are more likely to be able to afford it's actual value than I am. (Like fine art prints and expensive yarn.)

Like Satguru, I'm currently trying like the dickens to get a certain type of doll from the 70's (or even one of the repros!) called Blythe. These things are really popular at the moment, and I would love to have one, because I want to knit tiny sweaters and handbags and sell them. (And because I think she's cute.) Can't get a deal on one to save my life.

I agree - I'm not a last minute sniper - it's not my style. I put in my max bid right off. The system automatically ups the bid every time there is an opposing bid - that's just how it works. The price is not driven authmatically higher by this - my maximum is the same, no matter if I put it in with five days to go, or at the last minute.