Sniping Terms

Sniping and its related terms

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That's right, students. Sit up straight and face front. Class is in session. Pay attention, because there's a quiz at the end of the lesson.

Term	Definition
Proxy Bid	A bid entered for an auction that is usually, but not always, a fair amount higher than the current bid. If others bid against it, eBay will bid for you increments, always keeping your current bid at the lowest amount necessary until somebody overtakes you.
True Max	The absolute most you would ever bid for an item. Snipers and Proxy bidders use this to guide the amount of their bid. Some people claim that they do not have (or cannot define) true max bids for items, but this can lead them down a dangerous (in the financial sense) path. Proxy bids are not always True Max bids, but I'm pretty sure that the reverse is true.
Sniping	Sniping is the common practice of bidding on an auction by waiting until the last possible moment, then placing one bid in such a manner that other bidders do not have time to respond. The exact time at which a bid becomes a snipe has never, and probably can never, be precisely defined. I've heard anywhere from 3 seconds to 24 hours. Most of the sniper purists define a snipe as any bid under the 10-second mark, while most of the anti-snipers tend to be evenly split between defining it at 5 minutes or 10 minutes, although 1 hour is also popular. An important part of sniping is not only bidding towards the end of the auction, but also bidding with you True Max. If you don't bid the absolute most you are willing to pay, then you're not really a sniper. You're just a late lowballer.
Proxy Bidding	A style of bidding whereby the bidder takes the time to consider the absolute most she would pay for an item and places that bid one time. She knows that she will either win, or lose to somebody who was willing to pay more than she was.
Halfball Bidding	A bidding strategy that lies between classic lowballing and proxy bidding. The halfballer will look at the auction, judge where most of the current bidding is, then bid comfortably above that "for the time being". This is usually an amount far above where the lowballer would go, but is rarely the bidder's True Max. This amount will do until outbid. Then, the halfballer will bid again. This technique is superior to lowballing and nibbling, but will almost always fail against sniping and pure proxy bidding.
Lowballing	Lowballing is a bidding strategy whereby a person places the lowest bid he can in an auction. By this, the lowballer hopes to purchase the item for as low a price as possible with no risk that the price will increase suddenly. However, lowballing leaves the bidder wide open to being outbid immediately, whether by a sniper or another lowballer
Nibbling (aka snipping \| chipping)	The practice of submitting a continuous chain of lowball bids. A nibbler attempts to take the lead for an item, but does not want to commit to a large amount of money, or perhaps he has no defined true maximum bid. By bidding over and over again in small amounts, the nibbler slowly wears away at the bid leaders proxy bid until one of three things happen: The nibbler overtakes the high bidder. Sometimes, though, the nibbler can get caught up in the moment and bid more than he can afford, leading to retractions, negative feedback and even the dreaded NPB. The clock runs out. In this case, the nibbler has won nothing and only succeeded in making the high bidder pay more than she would have normally. The nibbler gives up. The highest bidder has entered a proxy that's tough to beat, and even the nibbler realizes that he can't bid forever just to overtake her. The end result is the same as the clock running out.
Shill bidder	A shill bidder is one who lowballs and nibbles away at a leader, either eroding their safety margin and forcing them to approach their true max, or keeps taking the lead, enticing the high bidder to keep re-bidding. Shill bidders are often friends or aliases of the seller, and do so to make them extra cash. Some of the conspiracy-type people believe that eBay enoucrages this, but I doubt it.
Surrogate Shill Bidder	Some sellers take advantage of the anti-sniper attitude among some eBayers and loudly proclaim that they will refuse to honor sniper bids. This is discussed in my Anti Sniper page, and while eBay does not recognize this term, it is as dangerous as traditional shill bidding. Perhaps more so, since snipers are used as tools by the seller and become shill bidders without knowing it, when they are only engaged in an activity that is legal and valid on eBay. When a sniper bids, she exposes the second highest bidders true max. The seller refuses to honor her bid, and sells to the Second-highest bidder, sometimes at his true max, which may be a lot higher than what the current bid was before the sniper came along. This not only cheats the bidders, it cheats eBay out of their fees, since this is then an off-eBay transaction.
Bid Shielding	When two user accounts bid astronomically high amounts for an item. This pushes the bid price up to an enormously high dollar figure, and causes others not to bid. Later, these two retract, and one of them (or even a third userid) bids again, and wins for a very low amount. New retraction rules make this tactic nearly a thing of the past.
Enemy Bidder	An eBay member who, for some reason, has taken a strong dislike to you. They follow you around, searching for items that you have bid on, and deliberately bid against you, either forcing the price higher or taking the item away from you.
Parasite Bidder aka Auction Stalker	An eBay member who has much the same interests as you in the collecing arena. However, searching for items is often time consuming. The parasite prefers to let you find good items and do the legwork. They do a search on items you are bidding on, and bid on them. The parasite's M.O. implies that they respect your taste and ability to find items, but it can be quite irksome.
Feedback Bomber	An eBay member who, for some reason, has taken a strong dislike to a seller. They will bid on their items, then refuse to pay and leave negative feedback. They often come back in different id's and make life miserable for the seller. Since this tactic is aimed at the seller and not the buyer, sniping cannot prevent this from happening.
Nuclear Bidder	A bidder who places very large bids on items. Their reasoning is that others will bid reasonably, so that they will always win, and only pay a few dollars more than they planned to. This can be risky, for many reasons, not the least of which is what happens if two people do this on the same auction.
The Seven Horsemen aka The Seven Signs of Evil	My collective term for Lowball Bidders, Nibble Bidders, Enemy Bidders, Parasite Bidders, Halfball Bidders, Shill Bidders and Feedback Bombers. Yes, yes. I know that there were only four horsemen originally, but I must move with the times. :-)
Buyer's Remorse	The realization that you bid far more than you were willing to pay for an item, or more than you can afford. Buyer's Remorse is often the result of a bidding frenzy due to Nibbling against a high Proxy. Buyers who can't, or won't, give themselves a True Max will bid over and over again until they overtake the proxy bidder, no matter how much they spend. Days later, they suddenly realize "Oh, no. I can't pay THAT much!". This happens because bidding gets emotional rather than scientific. Instead of taking the time to figure out how much they want to spend, they get caught up in an emotional battle, and their only goal is to take the lead, no matter the cost.