I have left many, many deals with an attitude I will wait and see. Then forget and come back and see that someone won with a silly small bid. It may not work often but it does happen. I saw a tube of ASE that was not bid on and went to no sale for 9.95 (From memory) the title was a little misleading but there could have been the bargain of the century had I put a small bid in.
That is where loading the auction up in your sniping software comes in real handy. That way you will still be able to bid, no one will know you are there, hence they can't bid up the price against you, and you can always cancel your snipe if you no longer want the item. Placing "known" bids on items on ebay's site actually attracts more bidders, and once you place a bid, you can't change your mind as you are not technically allowed to retract it. Plus, the more bids there are for an item, the more people think the item is worth, then come more bids etc...it is a snowball effect. We have these crows where I live and they announce loudly if they happen to find food..even if the amount of food is only suitable for one bird. It will CAW, CAW, CAW and attract a dozen or so birds, then they all get to fight each other for the small portion of food. If the damn original bird had of just shut up he would have had an entire meal to himself.
What I have experienced with sniping is ... If I win more than 20% of the items I probably payed too much. I bid 15 to 20% below spot silver and still win 15% of my bids. Two weeks ago I won 16 items, for a total ASW of 26.02 and spent only $ 629.83 USD including shipping. This includes one lot that I purchased that I paid more than ASW value, but it was off set by one very good buy that I purchased at $18.00 per ounce. My problem this takes a lot of time, for every 20 item that I put in my sniper I will only win 3.
