Crazy eBay ... Again!

[Catch-up]

Ok, I'll check the completed ones. Thanks!

[archerinwood]

d*mn it! I just found out I have lost the post early for hogswatch cinderella.

[Librarians Apprentice]

If you check the completed listings you'll see there are 25 items from Spain unsold because they attracted no bids at the prices they were posted at.

I won one of the covers the Spain guy/guys are selling from a different seller once, but it met with an accident before he sent it to me - so I offered the Spain seller the same amount, but they diclined because they claimed it's worth what they posted it for. Many months later, they still haven't sold it

[archerinwood]

forget what I said. I have upset someone.

[steeljam]

I have learned that the spanish seller is selling the items at a high price because they are selling them on behalf of the sellers rather ill brother. They want to get a high amount possible to help their brother.

A high starting price puting people off it is not helping.
Often a low start prices gets the bidding going and bids would pass the 'high' opening bid.

[archerinwood]

I know. I would do it a different way too. I remember wanting to bid on the racing stripes PP which started at £5. That sort of starting price will get people interested.

[Murgatroyd]

Grumble Grumble..... Missed out on a TOA 2 Birds horizontal wings sport... the bidding finished at about 02.30 in the morning here in Thailand, and I didn't want to wake my wife and daughter by having my alarm go off to wake me up. So I put in a bid for £82.99 before I went to bed, instead of doing it at the very last moment as I usually do. This allowed somebody else to bid all the way up to it on separate bids. I'd have won it if I'd waited and got up for it. It was listed as a normal TOA Falling man and I hoped that no one else had spotted that it was the very rare 2 birds sport. Fat chance. Grumble grumble.

[Mme les Deux-Epees]

Grumble Grumble..... Missed out on a TOA 2 Birds horizontal wings sport. Grumble grumble.

Still, think of all the LBEs you can now afford

[Joolz]

Grumble Grumble..... Missed out on a TOA 2 Birds horizontal wings sport... the bidding finished at about 02.30 in the morning here in Thailand, and I didn't want to wake my wife and daughter by having my alarm go off to wake me up. So I put in a bid for £82.99 before I went to bed, instead of doing it at the very last moment as I usually do. This allowed somebody else to bid all the way up to it on separate bids. I'd have won it if I'd waited and got up for it. It was listed as a normal TOA Falling man and I hoped that no one else had spotted that it was the very rare 2 birds sport. Fat chance. Grumble grumble.

Commiserations Charles and well spotted. I only have time to skim the titles of listings and so had missed that the description of this one picked it out as one of the rare second series of variants but I couldn't afford or justify to have bid as high as that anyway.

One thing I wondered reading your post was how you could be so sure that you would have won it if you had been up to bid at the final seconds. If I've done my research correctly, the winner was someone who has been collecting the stamps (and other pTerry and Clarecraft items) for a long time and buying and selling for an equally long time and has some pretty interesting high value items in their past profile (e.g. Hogswatch 2004 sheet and Rockall Dipped cover). I infer that they might have been willing to bid quite a lot higher than £84.99. They hadn't "found" your true bid at the time they made their winning bid so they couldn't calculate their final bid to be just in excess of your bid and it's not possible to tell what their actual final bid was. It could have been a lot higher than £84.99.

[Murgatroyd]

I reckon I'd have got it as the winner put in at least 25 separate bids before they topped the bid that I'd put in. If I had delayed my high bid until a moment before the auction closed they wouldn't have had time to do this!
Never mind... such is life, and I did have more cash to spend on LBE's

[Darren]

Can I suggest feeding the words "auction sniper" into your search engine of choice...

[Mme les Deux-Epees]

Grumble Grumble..... .

Were you the first person to bid on the stamp? If not, then perhaps that person is cursing you for also spotting it. There are many tactics you can use on eBay but a big pile of cash (or credit cards) will beat all of them. I have missed out by being off-line at the wrong time on many occassions but I have also got items cheaper than expected. The trick is to tell yourself something better/cheaper will turn up..it often does. I opened many LBEs in the early days and had given up hope of a blue triangle when I got one of the last ones (quick chorus of 'allways look on the bright side of life').

[Joolz]

I reckon I'd have got it as the winner put in at least 25 separate bids before they topped the bid that I'd put in. If I had delayed my high bid until a moment before the auction closed they wouldn't have had time to do this!
Never mind... such is life, and I did have more cash to spend on LBE's

OK, but why didn't you just put in the highest bid that you would have been willing to pay when you toddled off to bed if you knew you wouldn't be getting up to watch the last few minutes of the auction and go higher if someone else came in at the last minute? Surely that's the rational strategy in the circumstances you've described? "Worst" cases are either you win at your highest price or you lose because someone else was willing to pay more than your highest price in which case you believe they paid too much (or at least more than you were willing to pay) anyway.

[Murgatroyd]

When I went to bed the stamp was standing at £5.50... under the circumstances I figured that £82.99 was a fair bid... never mind, live and learn

[Catch-up]

Never mind, got the info I was wondering about!