[Leica] Bidding on eBay (was: something else totally unrelated)

["Frank Dernie" <Frank.Dernie@btinternet.com>]

Good idea. I'll check bid history, though I have been told privately that 
bidding programmes do exist and are even traded on e-bay so presumably
comply with the rules.
I guess to get a low price on e-bay you have to be bidding on items that
neither the other bidders OR the savvy dealers with this type of software do
not want.
Thanks for all the interesting comments everybody. My experience of e-bay is
that I have had luck in finding things which I havn't seen elsewhere but
never a bargain price.
cheers Frank

- ----------


> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 03:32:05 -0500
> From: Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Bidding on eBay (was: something else totally unrelated)
> Message-ID: <B6687BB5.36BB%howard.390@osu.edu>
> References:
>
> Frank Dernie jotted down the following:
>
>> The outbidder seems to know:-
>> a) how much is my maximum bid, which on one occasion had been over $1000
>> more than shown as the current high bid,
>> b) Outbids this value by a minimal amount ( less than the normal increment).
>> c) Does so in the last seconds of the auction.
>
>snip

> One solution that I can think of -- which may or may not work -- makes use
> of the automatic email service is that eBay started providing some time ago,
> which notifies you if you are outbid.  It supposed it would be possible to
> write a program that enters bids on your behalf (up to some maximum level)
> and which monitors any email sent to a particular email address.  This
> program would then start bidding in, say, the final minute of the auction by
> the minimum bid increment, and if it gets an email stating it has been
> outbid, place another bid with a minumum increment, etc., etc.  Speculation,
> but this would allow the program to always win the auction with a minimum
> bid increment.  However, I'm assuming that something like this would show up
> in the bid history for the item in question.
>
> M.