*mutter*

[ksmith]

Well, I am the proud owner of a 1966 paperback copy of Modesty Blaise. When I entered the bid a few days ago, I entered a ceiling that I thought at the time was over the top, but I didn't want to have to think about the bid and if anyone wanted the book so badly that they would push it beyond that price, they could have it.

So a few minutes ago I'm watching the last few minutes of the bidding on the dial-up, which means about 30 seconds between refreshes. My original low bid still held, no one else had bid, and I thought I had a good deal. Hit refresh one last time and found that hey, I won.

Then I went to pay and found that the winning price was 2 and a half times my original bid! Not as bad as it sounds, but it took the book from mass market pb into trade paper range. So I went back and checked and found that someone had tried to snake me by entering a bid about 3 seconds before the end of the auction.

I know all's fair in love and Ebay, but three seconds is a little below the belt.

So, my high ceiling proved to be not so high after all. And I got the book. So there. Nyah.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

For any item, more often than not (there are rare exceptions) I'll pick my top dollar and then forget about the auction until it's done-done-done. If I win, great; if not, well, I'll be disappointed but, as I have learned, there will always be another opportunity.

This is how I felt about something I bought recently. I looked over how much it sold for in previous auctions, how much it was selling for retail, and made the mid-high end auction amount my top bid. I was actually hoping someone would snipe me as that sale neared the end because someone had just posted the item at the Buy It Now price that would have saved me a few bucks. IOW, it was a common enough item that my patience would have been rewarded eventually.

So, you know, there are virtues in patience, one of the few lessons that sticking with dial-up has taught me. ::grin::

Well, I confess that I do have DSL on my office computer. The laptop stays pretty much dial-up.

But I never expected someone to try and snipe me so close to the end of the auction. Any program that can place a bid within a second or two of closing is going to beat out anything, including DSL.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Lovely cat, btw. You definitely got it at a very good price.