I'm watching an item on eBay (which, despite my hatred of it, is unfortunately still the best site from which to procure rare and/or unusual items) that went up two days ago. With more than 4.5 days to go, six fucking morons have already placed 27 bids on it, sending the price soaring into the stratosphere.
Now, I don't care so much about the price; if that's what the market will bear, that's what the market will bear. However, I simply don't understand the obsession with early bidding wars. There is absolutely nothing to gain by placing an early bid on an item, but a lot of negatives:
1. You signal to other buyers that you are interested - Even the hint of competition will bring out some interest, especially if it is perceived as a sort of validation. If I saw that a pristine prewar Martin guitar had zero bids on it with five hours remaining, I would assume that there was something wrong with it that other people knew about but I didn't. I probably wouldn't bother bidding, truth be told.
2. You tie up money until the auction's over - You're on the hook if nobody outbids you, which is good - until someone puts up a Buy-it-Now listing for the same item, at a lower price. Or your car's transmission falls out and you need to pay for repairs. Oops.
3. You raise the overall price by getting into a one-more-increment bidding war - It's the "in for a penny, in for a pound" theory. Theoretically, proxy bidding should be pretty efficient if people truly have a hard cap on the amount of money they're willing to pay. The trouble is, people are always willing to add a nominal amount to their "maximum." So if you put in a leading high bid of $150, your opponent will not bat an eye throwing in a new leading bid of $151. And hey, you just bid $150, what's two more dollars to win? Rinse, lather, and repeat. That's why you have to snipe. The only way to end that stupid game is to not give your opponent a chance to counterbid.
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