Bidding Wars

You can always tell the new people on eBay, they tend to bid like this:

Here’s a tip for you if you’re also new to eBay – it’s not the one who bids most frequently that wins, but the one who bids the most money.

Decide what you want to spend on something and put in that amount. Otherwise, you get caught up in the game of always trying to outbid everyone else. That’s how people end up spending more for something used on eBay than it would’ve cost them to just go buy it new.

Here’s how I tend to buy things on eBay. It works pretty well for me.

If there are no bids on an item and I know exactly what I’m willing to pay for it, I’ll just go ahead and bid that amount. If I get outbid, I just forget it. Everything comes back around on eBay, just wait a few days.

If there are bids already, I’ll watch the item and wait until the auction is almost over. If someone else has already bid and you bid against them, you’ll often end up with a situation like the one above.

I really don’t like being the high bidder during the last few minutes of the auction. I would much rather just walk in with about 10 seconds to go and put in the amount I’d like to pay for the item. That way I might win and I might lose, but I know I won’t go crazy and spend too much. There’s much less stress that way.

Also, this is my 300^th post…