Thread: God Damn Mother Flubbing Ebay

Originally Posted by enc

not very sportsman like but wtf

All's fair in Love, war and ebay!

the way Ebay is supposed to work is like this:

Starting amount £1
Ebay will usually ask you to bid a few cents over that amount (I don't know why is asking you in a £20 increments)
If you place a bid of £20, ebay automatically will use £1 out of the £20
When someone comes and place a bid, let's say £5, ebay will place £6 from the £20 you originally placed
Once the person keeps bidding, and goes over your £20, that's when you will be outbid

If the person keeps watching the item, and sees someone is outbidding them, usually they will keep placing bids to win the item. But if you do what I do and as you can see optheatre and enc do too, you already know you won't spend more than £30, just wait till the last moment and put that whole amount, ebay will only use what it needs to outbid the other user, unless the user had placed a higher bid than your £30.

Like optheatre mentioned, there are some websites and softwares that do this for you. I think one was ebaysnipper or something like that, I'm not sure now. Basically you add the item number to that program and the top amount you want to spend, the program will watch the ending time, and 10 to 5 seconds before the time is over, it places the full amount.

UPDATE:
I lost out again! This time it was a combination of 1 part novice, 1 part being at the bar when the bid ended instead of watching the auction on my iphone app and 3 parts being a kn*bhead in my bidding style (I bid twice on the same item, against myself at one point - due to an overzealous colleague telling me to bid bid bid)

I was on a works thing last night and was actually winning on the HVR-A1E auction so I went to the bar with 3 mins to go, expecting to come back and be the proud winner of said camera only to come back and see there had been a further 7 bids in the closing few mins and I lost.

I now understand how ebay works... sod all happens for life of auction until 1min before it is due to end unless a newbie like me comes along and bids too soon

We looked to get an A1e as an additional camera, started off as a bargain at £500, but in the last few mins ended up at £1500. The price I paid for mine two years ago when new!

But I have seen an A1 sold for £900.

I have found some new going for around £1.5k at the min from shops but that appears to be the best new price.

Got my eye on another used A1E and PDX10 going through ebay soon so will see how I get on with these.

If anyone does know where I can get a new A1E for less than £1.5k though, please let me know. May be safer than the ebay route.

I've been an eBayer since the first days of eBay. I've bought and sold hundreds of items. MOST of my film gear comes from eBay. I've had to develop some sneaky ways to get what I'm looking for. You might not be in such bad shape not getting the A1E, though - I've had an A1 for a couple of years, and I can tell you that the quality isn't that great - and it's one of the worst for low light there is. My Handycam HR-520Vs are better - MUCH better, actually. They only lack XLR inputs. Easily remedied by recording external audio and syncing later.

Anyway, just a hint for all you wanna-be eBay moguls; use esnipe (esnipe.com) - it let's you decide your max bid, then ONLY bids during the last 6-9 seconds of the auction. You can't control the seller's decisions to pull out early, but you can keep out of the bidding war. Additionally, I get a group of 15 friends to simply watch other auctions of similar class, so that the item I'm interested in LOOKS like there's less interest in it. When my item looks like it's being ignored, the bids don't climb so fast, and I successfully snipe lots of auctions, paying a ton less. I just got a '98 Land Rover Discovery for $2900, for example. Got my JVC GY-HD-110U for just $2000. So there ya go!

I've had my a1 for over 2 years and have been really happy with it (apart from the really dumbass tape entry mechanism having to take the tripod plate off every time. That said I've not seen or compared it to a HR-520V. But the XLR inputs would be essential for me anyway.

Well, I WILL say that the A1 REALLY looks like film with my DOF adaptor and an f/1.2 50mm lens when there's plenty of light. It just lacks clarity. has a lot of contrast - deep blacks and rich colors.

re: the 520v;
PROS: VERY VERY clear, lots of detail, AMAZING low light, tiny.
CONS: tiny, AVCHD format, no XLR inputs, the word "Handycam" on the side

I combat the lack of XLR input, I use an external recorder, then use "Pluraleyes" to sync in FCP. Simple, fast, and high quality.

Sometimes you just wanna shout.

There's a sound mixer on ebay which will go for a song in about 5 hours. The reason is that the seller has somehow managed to create settings that only allow Ebayers in the UK to bid. So me, in my foreign hotel room, even with a ebay.co.uk account can't get a bid in.

I've PM'd him and told him this to which he replied that he's only willing to sell to UK ebayers but is willing to post it abroad. I've told him that I want him to send it to a UK address but he needs to change the settings to allow international bids. If he's worried that suddenly hundreds of Norwegians will start bidding, he only has to make international postage £500 or something equally daft.

Five hours to go and he only has one bid and I can't get near the bleedin' thing.