Sniped!

I just sniped this gorgeous 9” Pioneer Trails plate on Ebay. It’s from the Wallace China Westward Ho series which features, IMHO, some of artist Till Goodan’s best work.

At the risk of tipping my hand to potential Ebay competitors, here’s my strategy: I check the new listings daily for stuff that interests me and when I find something I might want to buy, I click the “Add to watch list” button.

I never bid until the last 10 seconds of an auction – sometimes the last 5 seconds. Bidding early only invites a counter-bid and drives the price up needlessly. By throwing in a crushingly high bid in the last seconds, I make it impossible for a competitor to respond before the auction ends and the final price ends up just being incrementally higher than the previous high bid.

Yes, it’s a little risky if someone else has also put an insanely high bid on the item that is only slightly less than your insanely high bid, but that’s a rare case.