i dont like spend much energy on bid. so, i always BID NOW

ebay is fun, but can get ugly. I have not bought or sold on it in a while. Especially with the increases. When i used to bid, i would always put in the most i was willing to spend and if i got out bid oh well. One time i got into a bidding war over the stupidest thing...an instuction booklet for G1 Scorponok. Yeah it definatly ended with me winning for like 50 bucks. LOL HOwever good for me, the seller was one that i used to buy a lot from..saw what happened and charged me how much he would charge if he was sellin it off his personal site...about 10 bucks... :-)

I've said before, I'll drive up a price on something that I know is rare. Like the Megatron ATB or various older prototypes, and including lucky draws. I'll pop in a hundred dollar bid right away, regardless of what price it is at already. Just because I know those items are the rare exception when I would pay that much for something. But an Alternator or a Binaltech? No way.

eBay n00Bs annoy me too.... I'm like, why do you have to stake a claim to an item four days before it closes? Retards.

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Ebay people seem to fall into three categories.

 

1) "nOOBs".  These are the people who have mistaken ebay for an *auction* site.  You know, an where you state successively higher bids until somebody gives up?  They don't realize that ebay is instead an auction site, where you simply state once and for all what you want and what price you're willing to pay for it.  Just like auctions in real life!  You clearly have to be pretty stupid to make a mistake like that.  Dummies.

 

2) Seasoned Bidders.  These people bid what they're willing to pay and walk away.  They win, great, they pay what it took to win.  They lose, also great; somebody else was willing to pay more than them.  Mature people.  I wish I was one of these instead of a nOOB.

 

3) Snipers.  These people are like seasoned bidders, except they've adopted the tactic of placing their bid in the last second.  This has the following effects:

 

  a) they undercut the nOOBs, who might have bid closer to what they were willing to pay if they had seen the snipe bid in time (note that the *goal* here is for people to pay what they're willing to pay); basically taking advantage of the nOOB's nOOBiEness to get a lower price.  This is done at the expense of the seller as well, who was deprived of the potentially higher price that some nOOB was actually willing to pay, had that nOOB realized that he didn't have to bid up to it.

 

  b) they annoy the seasoned bidders, who had the enjoyable experience of it looking good for the longest time just to have some sniper snatch it at the last moment.  (Truly mature bidders would, of course, simply note the discourtesy of the sniper by dropping a pithy imprecation against the sniper's parentage, and then move on.)

 

Basically, snipers are people who take advantage of nOOBs to garner savings at the expense of sellers, and incidentally do so in a way that irritates everyone who's not a sniper.  It also appears that they take pride in this behavior, and think that people who don't undercut others and act discourteously should be taken advantage of.  I could be wrong about that, of course; I haven't actally read the minds of all snipers.  For all I know they're actually doing this from the altruistic motive of impelling nOOBs to learn the folly of RL bidding in the hopes of elevating everyone to the state of a seasoned bidder, at which time of course they would cease their sniping behaviours.  Based on the comments, I doubt it though.

Auction ended at $67. That is really stupid. One can get a BUY IT NOW BT Prowl or from an online store with a cheaper price than that if it's not available in a brick-and-mortar store near you.

Auction ended at $67. That is really stupid. One can get a BUY IT NOW BT Prowl or from an online store with a cheaper price than that if it's not available in a brick-and-mortar store near you.

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Maybe this person wanted an Alternator Prowl, not a Binaltech Prowl. As far as buying from an online store, everywhere I've looked he is out of stock.

an item is always worth what someone is willing to pay ;)

Auction ended at $67. That is really stupid. One can get a BUY IT NOW BT Prowl or from an online store with a cheaper price than that if it's not available in a brick-and-mortar store near you.

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Maybe this person wanted an Alternator Prowl, not a Binaltech Prowl. As far as buying from an online store, everywhere I've looked he is out of stock.

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Perhaps, but my point is that you can get the Binaltech version for cheaper and that contains die-cast.

 

This is one of the biggest reasons now why I prefer Binaltech over Alternators. I don't have to scramble to some online shop and pay premium prices for a plastic car. One of the reasons why many people preferred Alternators over BT because it's supposed to be cheaper. But if it ends up that one has to shell out over 50 USD for an Alternator, it is not surprising that quite a lot of people has dropped the American line.

Auction ended at $67. That is really stupid. One can get a BUY IT NOW BT Prowl or from an online store with a cheaper price than that if it's not available in a brick-and-mortar store near you.

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Maybe this person wanted an Alternator Prowl, not a Binaltech Prowl. As far as buying from an online store, everywhere I've looked he is out of stock.

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Perhaps, but my point is that you can get the Binaltech version for cheaper and that contains die-cast.

 

This is one of the biggest reasons now why I prefer Binaltech over Alternators. I don't have to scramble to some online shop and pay premium prices for a plastic car. One of the reasons why many people preferred Alternators over BT because it's supposed to be cheaper. But if it ends up that one has to shell out over 50 USD for an Alternator, it is not surprising that quite a lot of people has dropped the American line.

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I prefer Alternators over Binaltech because I don't like the paint-chipping that can result from die-cast. Also, if one were a MISB collector, and one were collecting Alternators, Binaltech wouldn't be an alternative.

 

I'm just playing devil's advocate, though. My opinion on Alternators vs. Binaltech is a minority one, and this is probably just a case of overzealous bidders.