Post #137515 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Wed, Jan 26, 2005 12:44 PM

Hi John,

I truly do feel your pain. As a ruthless postcard collector, I often make people like you very angry. Wait. That wasn't the sentiment I was aiming for. What I meant to say is that sometimes even I get outbid on rare postcards depicting local South Bay tiki locations that I truly have a deep interest in. For example, this postcard of the Polynesian in Torrance, which later became the Latitude 20, of which, sadly I was only able to salvage the Ebay listing photo:

Here's my advice:

1. If the item is well-hidden, meaning it doesn't have the word "Tiki" or the restaurant name in the Title. Then you definitely don't want to advertise its location by bidding on it. Use Esnipe or Auctionsniper to bid in the last few seconds and keep your fingers crossed. I have bidders use my Ebay name to point them towards hot items. They may do it to you as well. I certainly do it to other tiki-postcard collectors.

2. If the item is not well-hidden and you know other tiki collectors are bound to spot it, then put a minimum bid on the auction and put your maximum bid in Esnipe or Auctionsniper. For example, in your case, you would have bid $4 on the auction itself and put $155 in Esnipe as your backup.

The $4 minimum bid acts a deterrent against other collectors making an "off-line" offer to the seller to end the auction early. This doesn't always work, but a seller is much less likely to end the auction early if he already has bidders. He knows this might make the current bidder angry and possibly contact Ebay with a complaint.

On the other side, keeping the $155 in reserve on Esnipe instead of on the auction itself, means that the next bidder's bid will only show up as $5. The bidding is much less likely to get out of hand quickly and you have a better chance of your $155 being the high bid in the last few seconds.

3. If someone DOES contact the buyer and end the auction early, (which is against Ebay's rules), then contact the seller yourself immediately. Explain Ebay's rules, politely, then explain that his item is very valuable and that you and several other bidders you know were going to bid last-minute on it. You may want to even say that the item "sometimes goes for several hundred dollars" - this is tricky. You don't want to give him an exact figure that he can use as a minimum bid if he re-lists, but you do want to make him aware that the $30 he was offered by the off-line buyer is really just chump-change. Say, "Let me prove it to you. Re-list the item with your off-line bid as your new minimum bid. I can guarantee you that you will get higher bids. Tell your offline bidder that you just found out it was illegal and against Ebay's policy to end auctions early and sell them outside of Ebay. Apologize for the misunderstanding and re-direct him to the re-listed auction. If he really wants the item, (and he does), he will re-bid at your new minimum" Often the seller will put the item back up on Ebay very quickly.

Dangergirl - If two people are both using sniping software, then the highest snipe wins, but only by the lowest increment over the the other sniper - just like normal bidding on Ebay. If one bidder has a $155 Esnipe and another bidder has a $250 Esnipe, then the second bidder will win with $160. This happens to me every so often.

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy on 2005-01-26 12:57 ]

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy on 2005-01-26 13:12 ]