Well, I don't take the chance in sniping. Maybe you've been lucky all this time, who knows. I'm just trying to say that if you have to snipe fine, but if you have patience and the item you want is constantly out there, maybe you don't want to snipe.

You really have to snipe in order to get items and not overpay. The problem with ebay is auction fever. People will pay too much for items that they can get new elsewhere!

Let's say you want a DVD and the high bidder bid $15 but their bid is only $13.50. I am willing to pay $16 for the DVD. If I bid $16 2 days before auction end, the $15 bidder says "oh, I've got to have this, I'll bid $17" so my $16 bid is out. (then another bidder who bid $12 says "i've got to have this!" and bids $18 and before you know it the bid is higher than Amazon's new price!) If I bid my $16 at the last second, I win the auction because the pre-auction fever high bid was only $15.

Very often on popular items, there's a flurry of bidding in the last 10 seconds, but those bids still don't surpass the standing high bidder as he/she put in a higher initial bid, so sniping only works if the bid is higher than the standing bid.

I can beat Esnipe. I've got emails from people saying that they have esnipe and I still outbid them. Want my secret? It's easy Snipe yourself. Place your bid about one minute before close, make sure you are the high bidder. Bid low, just enough to get yourself to be the current highest bidder. Now refresh the page over and over until the last ten seconds and even if you are the high bidder still raise your bid. The amount of the auction will not go up unless someone else tries to snipe. Ebay's policy is that of a first come first served basis and if someone bids the same as you it will be your bid that stays put since you bid first. A fast internet connection is a big help also. Now that I've told you my secret please don't outbid me!

Let's end this thread by saying again, just vote the highest you would pay for.

Sorry, I had to bump this up cuz the same thing happened to me with a signed Bruce Campbell book--with 8 seconds left. But good news for me. Bruce came to Sacramento and did a signing. So not only did I get his book signed, but I also got two copies of the 2-disc LE AOD and one copy of the single disc LE signed by the man himself. Take that EBAY!