Because I take my kids to school in the morning, I have to set my sniper bids the day before, and I am not able to be present when the auctions close.
Therefore, I have a LOT of pressure to get the closing price right…and to ensure my max bid is more than ¥100 higher than whatever that price may be.
It’s wild how often my sniper bid ends up dictating the final price (1 bid higher than mine).
1 Like
See what happens when you enroll your kids in school. 
1 Like
You are not making bids on ebay. Sniper bids are much less useful on YAJ. Look for this:
It points to a page that explains it. Here is a bit of the text translated by google:
If the “current price” goes up from 5 minutes before the end of the auction to the end, the end time is extended by 5 minutes。
After that, if the price goes up in the 5 minutes before the end, it will be extended again and again。
This is the nature of the beast. Your sniper bid extends the end of the auction. This gives anyone else interested in the auction 5 extra minutes to wander over to their computer and put in a bid at the next increment above yours. As a seller I would LOVE this. it lets the market decide the price of the item.
2 Likes
This explains a lot. I was wondering why that damn PD515 pnp listing just wouldn’t end.
Did you read what I wrote?
That’s the only option I have to get the pieces I want.
And eBay is nothing but opportunistic Japanese sellers fishing for 300% markup.
(Also, I’ve probably bought more pieces on YAJ than anyone else on earth since April 2021; I know exactly how the auctions work. The 5-minute extension is annoying but unavoidable; if I refused to bid on anything listed this way, I’d only have 5 pencils.)
1 Like
Benefits of making a sniper bid vs just putting in your max bid early?
Max bid early gives ardent collectors time to consider their decision. I’d rather surprise them late with a demoralizing bid.
Here’s the precise scenario I see in my mind:
- Sniper bid comes in at a depressingly high number
- Potential buyer nuts up and bids higher than that
- Potential buyer gets immediately outbid by existing snipe bid, now completely demoralized. Only a complete nutjob continues to bid from here on out, and if they do, they deserve to win
It’s worth noting that I’ve also seen cases where the price went super high super early, and that scared everyone else away.
But I feel like that scenario happens a hell of a lot less than the scenario I described above.
Could it be that there are other more likely scenarios? Maybe others are using your strategy but have higher bids. Maybe they have a higher price in mind and are sitting at the computer knowing that sniper bids will come in the last 5 minutes so they can put in a higher bid. Maybe there are more than one person bidding on these using one or more of these strategies. Your sniper bid is really just your highest bid arriving in the last few minutes. You have to assume that everyone knows this.
I share your pain. If is frustrating when something sells for a little more than you are willing to pay. The other bidders are saving you from buying the pencils at a higher price.
1 Like
Yes, Yahoo Auctions are real auctions and not this lame ebay thing. You can really decide if you increase your offer. BUT: Usually I put in my sniper bid and let it go. Being overbidden doesn’t mean, that you would have been able to win with just 1 increase (the other bidder could have a max bid of a fantastillion JPY), it just means only 2 people were left.
1 Like
Doesn’t really matter when you bid in an environment where there is no “final 5 seconds.”
Everyone gets to see the price, and everyone gets to decide if they want to pony up the dough or not.
In my case, I cannot be present when the auctions close, so I just have to do the best I can with my maximum sniper bids.
Also, these didn’t necessarily sell for more than I was willing to pay. Had I been present, I would have bid more for the Ohto, the Grandee Priere, and the H-1094…but the ProTex was definitely off the deep end 