I have 2 types of bids I place for items I want to buy on Ebay. First is the common stuff, that is easily available. On those I place a mininum bid. If I don't win, then OH well tomorrow is another day. Here is a card that I bought today at the opening bid of $9.99. On these I win about 10 to 15% of the time. Economical way to get nice cards.









Bargain price for a PSA6 1967 Leaf Star Trek card.




The second category are scarce, not often seen cards like 1937 Ripley's & USHD High numbers. On those I place snipes, going up to the most I can afford to spend, and sometimes even higher.

All too often I have to scramble to raise the cash for my winning bids, but it's always worth it in the long run.




Just wondering if anyone else did this.

Hey Jerry

From time to time I will place a bid on items I want. I will first place a small bid such as if its opening bid is $9.99, I may put a bid of $20 in. And if I get the card for less, I am happy. I then will always place a snipe bid in for much higher just incase I get outbid and not present at my pc to place another bid. But 8 times out of 10, I place a snipe bid in and not a normal bid. I feel if I do this, then I am not running up the auction. May get it a lower price.



oops..typo

I haven't bought much of anything in a while but in my really active buying days I almost always sniped or set a snipe for anything I really wanted. On occasion I have done as you mentioned for cards I wasn't to concerned about, just putting in something at or near the minimum bid and letting the chips fall. For tough items, I usually bid more than I could afford...following Dan's motto of "Buy now, worry later". Back around 2000 or 2001 I actually built up a pretty good credit card hole scarfing up things on eBay but managed to pull myself out of it and still have most of that good stuff so I guess it ended up OK.

I snipe mostly, but place early bids on things I don't want to see end abruptly.