Now here's what I'm good at (part 2)

So yesterday, I left it where, two days before the auction close, an anonymous Ebay bidder I referred to as "Bobbie" was the high bidder on a Fern Lodge postcard at $45.67, a price another anonymous bidder (referred to as "Me") had also bid (purposefully) to expose "Bobbie's" maximum bid, and not put "Me"self in the lead (if two bids are identical, the first one entering Ebay's databank "wins").  Two things result from exposing someone's maximum bid with plenty of time before an auction (especially an auction on a rare or one-of-a-kind item) is scheduled to end:  (1) The high bidder gets nervous.  (2) Other bidders unrelated to #1 and #2 now have knowledge of the maximum bid placed by the high bidder, and so are free to deal with this information however they want (if they are uninterested in the item at that price, they can move on to another item, but if they are interested in the item, they know the minimum they will potentially have to pay, plus a bid increment higher, and can file this away for later use).

The lesson from all of this, if you're either lost of have lost interest, is "hold your water".  Ebay auctions end at a specific time (the default is generally 7 days exactly after the auction is listed, meaning 7 days and 0 hours and 0 minutes and 0 seconds after the auction item first appears), and the way Ebay works (unlike real auctions), you don't keep bidding to infinity, with no time constraint, until one of the bidders cries "uncle".  With Ebay, if you are smart, you wait until the auction is going to close, and you bid just before this, either live and in person, or by giving your password to a "shill" application to do it on your behalf.  High bid wins, and everyone else goes home crying.

Summary of bid action on the final day, beginning just over 2 hours prior to the auction close

Now, for some reason, other people have a different approach, which almost never works, unless you want to end up paying way more for an item than it is worth (meaning that you can turn around and sell it for to anyone but yourself).  Their "approach", if it can be called that, is to try to pummel all other bidders into submission by declaring early on "I'm going to get this item, and I'm going to overpay for it, so you can either help me on this quest by bidding against me and driving the price up, or you can also potentially overpay, if you are stupid enough to outbid me days before the auction is scheduled to close, and I suffer a coma that I don't come out of until the auction ends."

This strategy might work if you didn't make it very obvious from past history how you approach bidding on items (in poker terms, if you didn't have an obvious tell).  Again, as I noted previously, there is virtually no risk bidding against "Bobbie", because her bidding habits are known and predictable, and she will generally outbid you anyway, if there is enough time left in the auction.

So lets climb the ladder Sunday morning, when everyone woke up to the fact that the auction had about two hours before close, and "Bobbie" was sitting very precariously in the lead, because her maximum bid had been exposed.  "Bobbie" could have waited until just a few seconds before the auction ended to put in a new maximum, and thus protect herself, but this is not "Bobbie's" style and has never been "Bobbie's" style.  What you can't see directly from this screen grab is that two hours before the close, Bobbie entered a new maximum.  On the screen that shows the item and the current high bid, the simple way to detect this activity is that another bid has been registered (the total bids, the bid count, goes from 13 to 14, for example) but the current high bid doesn't change.  "Bobbie" has entered a new maximum she is willing to pay, but the bid price doesn't go up, because she can't bid against herself.

Until someone bids against her, the bid price will stay the same.  But, two hours before the auction is scheduled to close, "Bobbie" has just invited people to the "bid against me" party.  There is little risk, because "Bobbie's" bid increments are predictable.  The next level above $45.67 is $56.78, then $67.89, etc.

Let's climb the ladder, and see what happens when "Me" discovered this 20 minutes prior to auction close.  ("Me" tends not to check in on auctions two hours before they are scheduled to end, because it's a waste of time - It would be like leaving a football game at the end of the 3rd quarter and telling everyone in the parking lot the final score.)

Now, here is the only brilliant thing "Me" did in this auction.  "Me" didn't immediately jump to $56.78 and enter that as his maximum bid (as he usually does) because recently, God be praised, "Bobbie" has started learning, like an intelligent computer program circa 1983.   "Me" had a hunch that "Bobbie" wasn't going to bid $56.78 this particular time, in hopes that "Bobbie" could play a trick on "Me".  "Me" (dumb luckily, wisely, fortuitously, brilliantly, you decide) started going up by $2, first bidding $46.67, then $48.67, then $50.67, etc.

How about "Using Ebay for fun and profit"

Because of this unconventional bidding strategy, "Bobbie" got the short end of the stick yet again, because, at 9:36:57 Pacific Daylight Time, "Bobbie's" maximum was exposed at (big plot twist) $55.  Bobbie had placed a bid other than $56.78, which in any other positive feedback loop would earn her a big treat, and put egg on "Me's" face (because he would find himself suddenly exposed as the unexpected, and certainly unwanted, high bidder), but in this case, because her opponent was devious/lucky/touched by the hammer of Thor, earned her another sad emoji :-( in an ongoing harvest of sad emojis :-( :-( :-( :-(

But we are not finished yet.  The surprise (shocking) ending awaits (to be continued)