Bid increment of 1 cent?

[oldbazaar]

Bit odd? Starting price was 99 cents. I gave my highest bid at $1.04. Normally the next increment is $1.29. With seconds to go I was outbid, winning price $1.05? How can that be? 

[pierrelebel]

Take a look at:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bid-increments.html 

Now, if there is only one bid at $1.04 (yours) while the starting bid was at $0.99, a new bidder is allowed to bid $1.05 which is more than the $0.05 minimum increment at the $0.99 level.

The second bidder had no way of knowing your bid was $1.04.

There is nothing wrong with the result in this case. The system worked exactly as designed.

[toby_le_pue]

If the start price would have been $1.01 then the bid increment would have been 25 cents but it was less than $1.00 so it was only 5 cents.and the winner bid 6 cents.

[oldbazaar]

Odd. I have never been able to bid at $1.05 myself. Never ever as in never. Most odd. 

[pierrelebel]

You can bid $1.05 and your bid will succeed at that price if the starting bid is under $1.00 and a previous bidder bid $1.04 (reversing the roles).

[oldbazaar]

Well, I'll have to start trying it, I guess.

[pierrelebel]

Why did you bid $1.04 ?

To force a winning tie if another bidder bids with the minimum $0.05 increment at the $0.99 level?

[oldbazaar]

The aim is to win as close to $1.00 as possible. As a lot of bidders seem to put in their high price at $1.00, and the next bid up seems to be $1.04 (as you say forcing a tie), that seemed to me to be best opening bid. It had never occured to me to try $1.05, I've NEVER seen it happen before. 

[buytosellforcash]

This is along the same line...

The other day I was sniping in the last few seconds on many separate 0.99p UK auctions which someone else had already placed bids.  At first I was placing a maximum of 5 pounds per auction and winning at 3.2 pounds.  Once I realized that the other bidder's maximum bid was consistently 3 pounds, I started sniping the auctions at 3.01 pounds - saving myself 19p per auction.

It's a good enough reason for me not to bid too far in advance and instead to snipe.

[oldbazaar]

Yes, I experimented yesterday with $1.05 bids and got several. I feel rather silly to be honest that I haven't figured this out before, but I simply hadn't seen it happen.