AE Burton on Ebay

I've never understood eBay sniping. Isn't the proper thing to do is to bid exactly what you would pay, and no more? You'll automatically pay the minimum you need to win the auction.

I temporarily owned an AE Burton. I decided it didn't fit and returned it. The apron design I think is nice but the squareness of the toe is pretty bad (though not as bad as that picture makes it look).

osc said:

+1 - Sniping was the standard back in the days and still is.

If you think about it, if I were to bid on an item 2-3 days prior to the ending, another buyer has the time to incremental bid and eventually win (I know it's a little tedious to do this, but it does happen). Also, sniping benefits the buyers as it doesn't necessarily cause inflation prior to the auction ending.

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You should never change your maximum price for something just because someone else wants to pay more. (If only people applied this to the stock/housing market...)

So the reason for sniping, I guess, is not to be irrational but to take advantage of others' irrationality by keeping auction bids low.

Mike Petrik said:

No, it is to avoid the irrationality of others who will bid more in a contest based on emotion.

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This is pretty much what I said, only you make a different judgment on how other people should rationally price things. Why don't we leave that question for the behavioral economists...