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discussion topic: Snipe bidding

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discussion topic: Snipe bidding
Diablo, i agree, multiple tied leaderboards is frustrating, but it is a topic that has been hashed out over and over. Unfortunately, because the auctioneer may value things differently that someone else, sometimes ties will occur. when people put up a tied leaderboard in every auction they run, then something might be wrong, but personal value of bids is going to vary and sometimes there really is no difference between 2 bids.

Snipe bidding in DPF auctions as an example, would be someone bidding a hidden mickey pin, on an auction with no bids, in the last few minutes. In order to get an LE for a hidden mickey. People who run auctions are always concerned about this until a few good bids come up. Reserves are not available in the auction house, because everyone values their pins differently. I have yet to see someone win an LE with 1 hidden mickey ((even my POC auctions get multiple bids)) but it is a concern that I feel needs to be discussed.
 
If there are no active bids on a DPF Auction, can it be closed early? If so someone can close their auction say 1 hour before official close if there is no bids to stop getting an unacceptable bid.
 
Love the kevin pic XD

I sniped alot of my pins, but I rarely place a bid before the given end time as I wait to put in my max bid anyway in the last 10 seconds so even if my bid is about $50 higher than the price it is within the last 10 seconds, it kinda almost doesnt give any one else to up their bid high enough to outbid me XD
 
Can't you put restrictions on what's offered to some degree? Like no HMs, or if there's a character you simply do not collect you can tell people so they don't bother offering them?

If not, it might be a good idea to allow some sort of 'protection' just to make people feel better about the auctions. Like you said, if it is a somewhat valuable pin I'm sure there will be some decent offers on it, but maybe a rule that allows an auction to be canceled if there's no bids once it reaches the last 12 hours (or even last hour or something)....

But I suppose that does happen on eBay... You list something for 99 cents, and no one bids... Then someone throws a bid at the last second and wins it for 99 cents, when you might have been hoping for a lot more. Of course, eBay does give you other options (like canceling, reserves, etc), but it's easier there since it's for money (you know the exact value of the bid). When it's something arbitrary like pins, everyone could (and does) value them very differently... It can be hard to set the exact same kind of rules for a trade auction vs a cash auction since the value of the items can always be up for interpretation...
 
I always snipe bid on eBay auctions for a few reasons, unless I really don't plan on being around for the end or it's not a super important item to me.

1. To avoid the win it an any cost people. I have been involved in many auctions where people get so caught up in it that is actually goes for a lot more than a buy it now price on the same item from someone else. I have seen some go 2x as high as another buy it now price.

2. To avoid shill bids just trying to bid me up.

3. To aid in my own self control by not giving me a chance to bid higher when I have already put in my max.

Remember, if you bid the max you wish to pay, then you did all that you could to get it. Just because the auction ended 50 cents above your last bid doesn't mean that is all they bid. I recently won an auction for under $15, yet I bid $50 because that is what the item was worth to me to own it.
 
I agree with something Psycho Pixie said yesterday. It shouldn't make a difference if you put in the most you would want to pay for the item up for auction. The part I don't understand is why anyone would want to drive the bid up during the first few days of an auction. For example, when I look at what the BT pins have been going for lately and how the price keeps increasing over the auction time it just doesn't make any sense to me to have a bidding war when there is so much time to think about and raise a bid. I snipe when I think I may have a chance at a pin and have been "out sniped" many times simply because I didn't want the pin as bad as someone else. You are dealing with dollars on the bay our DPF auctions are a bit different.
Our money is the perceived value of our pins to the person holding the auction. They have the choice of setting leaderboards based on those bids. I don't hear too many complaints from the "auctioneers" when a ton of pins gets bid, and I really can't see a problem with a last minute bid if nobody else bids. It may be sucky but it goes with the territory. If there were no other bids maybe the pin didn't have the value it was thought to have had. I would bid at the last minute if I wanted it, but certainly not a Hidden Mickey. I don't need any new enemies. I have plenty of old ones:rolleyes:
 
rik1138 said:
Can't you put restrictions on what's offered to some degree? Like no HMs, or if there's a character you simply do not collect you can tell people so they don't bother offering them?

If not, it might be a good idea to allow some sort of 'protection' just to make people feel better about the auctions. Like you said, if it is a somewhat valuable pin I'm sure there will be some decent offers on it, but maybe a rule that allows an auction to be canceled if there's no bids once it reaches the last 12 hours (or even last hour or something)....

But I suppose that does happen on eBay... You list something for 99 cents, and no one bids... Then someone throws a bid at the last second and wins it for 99 cents, when you might have been hoping for a lot more. Of course, eBay does give you other options (like canceling, reserves, etc), but it's easier there since it's for money (you know the exact value of the bid). When it's something arbitrary like pins, everyone could (and does) value them very differently... It can be hard to set the exact same kind of rules for a trade auction vs a cash auction since the value of the items can always be up for interpretation...
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There is no reserve allowed on a DPF auciton. Even if they say "please no hidden mickey's" if the only person to bid bids a single hidden mickey, they have to complete the transaction. (Or get an infraction.) Lucan444 was a professional DPF sniper. He'd follow long forgotten and unbumped threads and snipe a late bid. Before you all get your panites in a bunch, that's not a personal dig, it's just an observation.

Two of the main issues I have with DPF are a few of their auction house rules and that they allow people to say "Gift paypal only." Any online forum should protect their members and paypal as gift opens up forum members to fraud and deviant internet trolls. Their auctions should have some kind of reserve so that people can feel comfortable auctioning a pin. Make it a 3-bid minimum. Also, make it so if an auction gets a bid in the last hour, it gets extended. I have long said if a late bid changes the leader, then the leader up to that point should be able to respond to the sniper. If that bid flip-flops it again, you continue in a sudden-death pin bid-off until someone caves. Allow a certain time period for each to respond as we all don't live in Pacific Coast Time zone!
 
markheardjr said:
I have long said if a late bid changes the leader, then the leader up to that point should be able to respond to the sniper. If that bid flip-flops it again, you continue in a sudden-death pin bid-off until someone caves. Allow a certain time period for each to respond as we all don't live in Pacific Coast Time zone!
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Exactly, that's what an auction _IS_... If it wasn't for eBay, that's what auctions WOULD STILL BE... If eBay didn't exist, DPF wouldn't have even thought of this 'auction must end at an exact time' rule... It doesn't make sense. Why put in place a rule that's outcome only screws over the members of the board? Who does it benefit to basically lock out people from placing an additional bid?

erikr said:
There is no difference from Snipe Bidding and Shill Bidding. Right?
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Not even remotely related in any way...

Snipe bidding is just a term used in eBay auction for someone placing their bid at the last second(s) of the auction, nothing more. There's nothing shady about, nothing illegal about it, nothing immoral about (and I've never seen anyone suggest otherwise). It's just waiting until the last minute to bid.

Shill bidding is when the _owner_ of the item being sold places bids on his own item to drive the price up. He may place those bids himself, or have a friend bid on his behalf, or in some cases the owner may not even know it's happening (someone else is just driving up the price to either 'punish' other bidders by making them pay more, or to artificially inflate the value of the item being sold).
 
Sherry4pins said:
What if the auctioneer states: "No Hidden Mickeys will be accepted as bids."?
That should be allowed. You are stating a fact, not a request.
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Right now, even if the OP states that, if the only bid is a hidden mickey, they must accept it. Granted 99.98% of the regulars on the auction house would respect that and not bid hidden mickeys.... The auctioneer must chose a winner, even if theres only 1 bid and it is something they stated was undesirable.
 
The difference between eBay and here is that eBay is proxy bidding. If the current high bid on an eBay auction is $10 and I bid $100 it just bids enough to beat the $10 bid. If someone comes in and bids $75 at the last minute, the system raises your bid for you. So you do have "protection" of sorts against sniping.

On here it is different. If someone comes in at the last minute you most likely can't do anything to raise your bid. If someone comes in with 10 seconds left it would be more or less impossible to type up a new bid in time. There have also been auctions where people have come in and added to another person's bid in the last minute. You can't really do anything except to go around overbidding on everything.
 
bombardon3 said:
On here it is different. If someone comes in at the last minute you most likely can't do anything to raise your bid. If someone comes in with 10 seconds left it would be more or less impossible to type up a new bid in time. There have also been auctions where people have come in and added to another person's bid in the last minute. You can't really do anything except to go around overbidding on everything.
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But there's just no point to it here, is there?

On eBay, if you bid $100 and I bid $200, then my $200 bid _IS_ the winning bid, period (or $101, whatever the proxy increment is). There's no dispute about that. The seller won't go 'Nah, I like the other guy's $100 bid more, I'm going with him'.

How can you be certain when you place a 'snipe' bid on the DPF in the seconds before the auction that the seller will accept your offer as the winning one? You have absolutely NOTHING to judge that on... Unless you are offering the exact same pins as the leader + a few more, you have no way of knowing if your bid will even be accepted... Then _you_ don't have a chance to add more pins to your bid... Even if it's the most awesome collections of pins in the world (to you), the seller could just as easily stick with the current leader... If you can't put an exact, numerical value on the pins being offered, bidding at the last second really offers you no advantage.

And if you really think your pin bid is going to be awesome (like _every_ grail pin the seller wants), it's going to most likely remain the leader whether you place the bid on day 1 or at the last second...

If you are just trying to sneak in a low-ball bid on something with no bids at the last second, then yeah, maybe that will work... (But hopefully there really aren't people here that do something like that... Kind of defeats the purpose of a 'friendly, caring community', doesn't it?)
 
rik1138 said:
If you are just trying to sneak in a low-ball bid on something with no bids at the last second, then yeah, maybe that will work... (But hopefully there really aren't people here that do something like that... Kind of defeats the purpose of a 'friendly, caring community', doesn't it?)
Click to expand...

An auction shouldn't be random lopsided trading. The point of an auction is that as the price rises you can decide if it is worth it to you. I get your point that you should just bid what you are willing to part with to begin with, but often that changes over the course of an auction. There have been plenty of trade auctions where after being outbid I decided I wanted the pin enough to pull pins from my keepers. Snipe bidding deprives me of the opportunity to raise my bid to counter and it deprives the person auctioning the chance to get those better bids. That's why I agree with Mark that there should be a way to extend the auction when late bids come in.
 
I think that if there was a process to extend the auction, there would still have to be some limit (in time or bids) to avoid endless tweaking of bids. In a traditional auction, bidders drop out when they are unwilling to put up more money, but with pins it's different. You could end up with bidder 1 and bidder 2 continually trying to change their bids in the hope that a different combination of pins would put them in the lead ...when it's money, I either add another $10 or not...when it's pins, I can say 'well, instead of pin A and pin B, how about pin A and pin C?'
So...if extensions were allowed in the case of 'last-minute' bids, I think you'd need some kind of rule. Possible rules might include: adding X minutes to the auction, OR each of the 2 bidders is allowed to place one last 'best offer' bid, OR both bidders could continue to bid but only by adding pins rather than changing them....something so that there is a logical 'end' to the auction.
 
I can honestly say i would NEVER offer a HM on anauction here unless they said they wanted one. That is a sure fire way to get people to not want to trade or bid on your auctions. And word spreads like poison ivy on here. Where is the honor gone? Karma people will bite u in the butt.
 
...why don't we just say that an auction has to have at least two bids to have a winner that MUST be honored?

If there's one bid, the OP can either chose to accept the trade/auction, or to shut it down with no winner (and that rule should only be there in case the OP actually likes a fair bid placed).

I guess you could get teams working on it that way, but at least the pattern of the same two people in the last minute would be noticed, and they could get banned from that particular board for not participating "in the spirit" of it.
 
BugCatcherJenna said:
M5khf25.jpg


DID SOMEONE SAY SNIPE??
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Ah! so glad you made this. My first thought when I saw this thread was "When's Kevin gonna show up?"
 
2 different replies now mention the "spirit" of a pin auction and i really think that is what it comes down to...

Also something to remember is accountability As a community, seeing someone "snipe" a pin auction by bidding a hidden mickey or other totally unfair item to win at the last minute... would cause an uproar. We can see who is bidding, and if someone did that, especially more than once, a massive Shun campaign would ensue.
 
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