Taken out by a sniper.

If you use ebay, which I guess the majority of you do then you have encountered a snipe bid in the dying seconds of the item you are bidding on.

The way I see it there are two different types of snipers, primitive and advanced.

Primitive snipers are the type who see what they want, watch the item and see how it is going. Then just before it ends, enter a max bid and submit.

Advanced snipers are the type who use sniping tools. These are offered by third party websites who, for a small fee, will allow you select the item that you want and lets you make a bid. Then they will enter your bid literally the very second before the auction ends.

As you can imagine the advanced snipers have much better luck then the primitive snipers. I was taken out by an advanced sniper just a few days back, causing me to lose an auction by 25 cents. The card in question was a Adam Lind Topps Chicle umbrella back numbered out of 25. I placed my bid with 10 seconds to go and hit submit with 5 seconds to go, this is what I call primitive sniping. When I got back to the bidding screen I watched the timer hit one second to go and then zero, I was the highest bidder. When the screen refreshed It said that I was outbid! I was disappointed. I don't mind if I lose a card because I have been outbid by a lot more than I would have paid but when its just by a few pennies or even a few bucks, its maddening!

Now I have to be honest, I have sniped in the past but not with any great success. I have won a few nice cards but have lost out on a lot more. I wonder if I had bid on these cards earlier rather than wait would I have won them? Maybe. An auction that has bids on it from the get go tends to generate more bids before the end and sometimes this would scare away a sniper because they wont be getting a bargain.

Anyway after the auction had ended and I saw that I lost I thought I would cheer myself up and check out what BIN's have been listed. Whenever I do this I only look for cards that were a similar price to the card I was bidding on and I found one that I wanted that was cheap. I actually wrote about the card only a few days ago saying that I wont be getting this card for a while because there were other cards that I wanted first, but hey! I needed cheering up! So I found a Ginter Lind GU for $6, this included shipping to the UK. Also I was refunded $4 the day before so I got this card for only $2. This made me happy.

I expect this card, as well as a few others next week. I should have a very nice couple of mail days coming in. There will be some new ginter minis, some Heritage SPs, some packs and also something that I can not believe I'm being sent! I don't want to say what it is because I cant believe it myself! If I say it out loud it may not be true. Just want to say a huge thanks, in advance, to John at pursuit of 80'sness for his amazing generosity.