Why Snipe?
By  Phil

Experience over the course of time tells us that bidding as late as possible is advantageous on ebay for a number of reasons:

• You generally beat those people who don't use the proxy bidding system intelligently. (Note: you don't beat people who do use the proxy system correctly unless you have a higher bid.)
• You avoid being shilled.
• You avoid having your bid nibbled up to the max by people who can't make up their mind.
• You avoid having your max probed (usually by somebody who bids insanely high and then retracts with a "sorry, I mistyped" excuse).
• You avoid attracting unwanted attention to your bidding pattern (usually by people who use Search by Bidder to follow you around and bid on what you're bidding on).
• You force yourself to exercise discipline. Since you don't have enough time to get involved in bidding wars, you won't catch "bidding fever". You have to bid rationally.
• You have to decide what something is worth to you, instead of letting other people decide for you (a sure route to "bidder's remorse").
• You minimize the time it takes to find out if you've won the auction, so you can get on with your life.
• When you bid, you've committed that amount of money for the duration of the auction. You need to hold the money in reserve, in case you win. If you bid at the beginning of a 10 day auction, your money is tied up for 10 days. By waiting until the end of the auction, you minimize the time your money is tied up.
• You get to "cancel" your bid. If you place a bid at the beginning of a 10-day auction, you're committed for 10 days prior to the end of the auction. According to eBay rules, you really cannot retract that bid. If you don't bid until the end, you're not committed and can decide to not bid without penalty.
• You beat those smug lowball bidders.

• Early bid wins all ties. If your snipe bid is exactly the same amount as somebody else's early bid, the early bid wins. (This is why we recommend adding an odd number of cents to your bid - if your snipe bid is even just one penny higher than the early bid, then you break the tie and you win.)
• Some sellers will monitor their auction and close it early if they don't see any bidding. A few sellers use this as an anti-sniper tactic. In cases like that, you might consider making a nominal bid early on, to let the seller know there's interest.
• No second chances. You get one shot, win or lose. If you really want that item, you'd better bid like you mean it, because you can't go back and rebid. (Just don't overbid - you are responsible for the amount you bid.)
• If ebay suffers some kind of outage when the auction ends, you won't have a chance to bid.
• If you forget to bid, you automatically lose. (That's one of the reasons the sniping services and sniping software are so handy.)