I use to work for eBay's Customer Support team, and eBay is not intended for last-minute bidders. You are suppose to place your highest bid, and then wait and see if you're out-bidded. However, the majority of bidding does happen in the last couple of minutes of an auction. So what you're doing is normal. You may want to try the e-snipe program as mentioned above, or you can use eBay's Bid Assistant software which does the same thing, and is user friendly. Go to your My eBay page, click on 'bid assistant' to the left of the page, and that software will allow you to place a maximum bid, and it will place your bids for you. And if you lose your auction, then it will start bidding on the next auction that you've assigned for bidding. Trust me, it's easy to use. Anyways, hope this helps somewhat.
JannettyTRocker
eBay has made it beyond simple to win an auction the moment its posted. Like it was mentioned before, its called a maximum bid, bid what you are willing to pay for what you want and not any more if someone pays more then figure it as a deal in your favor. I was like you wait and wait until bam its you against the world. Bidding first and having a good maximum bid detracts people because most bid up in small increments and once they have bid a few times and they are still not the high bidder they move on to another auction.
Another thing is, always communicate with the seller before placing a bid to see if they have more of the same item not yet listed or try to work a deal and close the auction with you as the high bidder. When you open a conversation with a seller treat it like a swap meet deal haggle them, be firm on what you want, tell them of other sellers deals, and most of the time you will get a great deal.
One time I got GoW still in the shrink wrap, with 2 sets of baseball cards both sets having around 30-40 cards each from the late 80's and early 90's (Dodgers & Mariners) for $40 shipped when GoW was still $60. All I did was look at his items and what he had sold and just messaged him to see what he had laying around, he set up a Buy it Now auction and that was it. The collective value of the cards at the time when I looked them up was about $20-25 and he gave those to me for free as a closer.
Its all about research and communication when comes to deals on eBay, don't waste your time waiting for an auction to end, there are many more sellers willing to give you a better deal.
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