ebay bids..........?

Question

how come on an item, in the bid history,
there will be one bidder that has 4 or 5 bids in a row. no one between their bids?
does this happen all the time?

Answer 1

When you bid on eBay you are bidding the MOST you are willing to pay for the item. Let's say it is a book. The starting bid is $9.99 and I enter my max bid of $25.00. That means I will pay up to $25.00 but of course want to pay less. EBay will not jump the bid up to $25.00 immediately....they will start it at $9.99. Now say you enter a bid of $15.00. My max bid still is higher than yours so it jumps to $15.50 and I am still winning. So you enter $20.00. The bid jumps to $20.50, but I am still the highest bidder. Even though I have bid just once, when you look in the history it seems like I have bid three times because three bids entered were lower than mine.



Since you are not sure how high my bid goes, that is where the strategy comes in. How high are you willing to go to get the item?



Bidding on eBay is not about entering the smallest bid that beats the current one. It is better to bid the most you are willing to pay or slightly under in case someone does outbid you. Sometimes you get lucky and no one bids against you so you end up paying a really low price. Don't forget to figure in the cost of shipping with the item. In my early days of bidding I was excited to get a toy for the winning bid of $2.00. But then it cost me $20.00 for shipping so it really was no bargain!

Answer 2

Lets say there is an item for auction, starting at 0.99 cents. and there are two bidders.



Bidder # 1 sees the item and places a maximum bid of $20. Because you cannot see someone's max bid, you see 0.99.



Bidder # 2 also likes the item, so they bid $5.00



The top bid is now Bidder # 1 for $5.50



Bidder # 2 really wants the item so they try again, and bid $10



The top bid is now Bidder # 1 for $10.50



This can continue until Bidder # 2 bids higher than Bidder # 1



Each bid will be reflected in the bid history. It can be a common thing to see when the item is popular, starts at a low cost and has a lot of bidding activity.

Answer 3

Yes. If the proxy bid is more than the other bids.

That is because of the proxy bidding system. The bidding starts at an amount set by the seller, lets say $.99.

Say the first bidder doesn't want to pay more than a certain amount for an item...like $25.00. So, they bid a proxy amount of $25.00 as the highest amount they will go. The bidding starts as the lowest price set by the seller of $.99.

Another interested bidder is bidding up to $10.00 (they do not know what the highest proxy bid is). First they bid $2.00, then $5.00, then $10.00. The bids that are lower than $25.00 will automatically be out bid by the first proxy bidders higher amount of $25.00.

There will be no bids in between because the proxy bid was set before the interested bidder started.

Answer 4

No, that's the risk a Seller has to accept when they put an item up for bidding. A seller sets a low opening bid to encourage bidding. They can set a reserve price to make sure they get a minimum price, but they must accept the final bid. Some sellers rig the auction by padding the shipping costs. That means they add extra $$$ to the shipping cost to get more money out of the buyer.

Answer 5

On eBay, you set your maximum bid.



If an item is 4.50, but the high bidders maximum bid is 8.00, then if you bid 5.00, you will be autoimaticaly outbid.



It sometimes takes several bids to become high bidder (or to reach your own limit)

Answer 6

There is an option that let's you up your bid to your maximum amount, or you can up your bid anytime. So each time you do this, it shows as a bid.

Answer 7

Because of the proxy bidding. If I bid fifty bucks, and you come along and bid forty, I've still outbid you but you raised the price. So, then you bid 42 bucks and I've still outbid you but you've raised the price. So, you bid 45 bucks (etc etc etc). So, you don't end up above my user name in the bidding list until you outbid me above fifty bucks.

Answer 8

it doesn t happen all the time but they do it to bid on top of each other so then when anyones there they can bid on top of them.

Answer 9

They just want to make sure nobody can top them..