Your right Coffeeking it can do and I could use autosniping but chose not to wish others would but that's not going to happen. Convert it's not my preferred method no or I'd use sniping software. Like I say I'll just put in a maximum bid unless I really want to win an item then I'll try to snipe, if you read what I put above you'd see that.

bukkakehairdo yes that's right I'm a bit thick thanks for you massive and useful insight into how ebay works.

case closed! 😀

i rocked up to a 105 ht2 chainset and got it for £12posted. strange.

I'm the 99p first bidder, I admit it. And I always see another STWer on eBay doing the same too!

For what it's worth, I'll occasionally bid midway through an auction if I really want something just to possibly scare away a few punters that hang around looking for the bargains. People will snipe a big price if they think they can get a bargain, a fair few seem to ignore stuff already getting a decent-ish price.

That's the whole point of 99p starting prices. Get people watching/bidding on things then the red mist decends. Been tempted by a (new) Campag chainset that has not sold at starting price £45 twice already this week, when an identical used one went for over that cost because they started at 99 pennies.

I was bidding against a Chariot trailer a while back – nice double one, the full works with it. I was bidding against someone who didn't care about the price and was always upping their max bid. I could've put in say 2/3 the new price which i'd have grudginly paid, but they would've trumped me no matter what. I knew this from looking at the bidding history and from a few exploratory bids I'd placed. So if I want it, but am not prepared to pay what they are prepared to, what choice do I have? Let it go and wait months for something else to come up?

I sniped, but missed as it happened – possibly because I was using my mobile.