It may be sniping, but if the sniper paid more than you were willing to pay, then he paid too much and is a sucker.
Sniping is last minute bidding. Which is what you are doing when you hang over your keyboard, bidding and rebidding.
The winners may be using the same method. or an electronic sniping service which does it for them.
Or the winner may have bid early, bid their maximum, and left, knowing that the proxy bidding system will continue raising their bids until that maximum is bid.
For example.
An item has an opening bid of $10
I want it and on Day Five of the seven day auction I bid $100.
The winning bid shows as $10
You see in on Day Six and bid $11.
The winning bid now shows as $12, still to me.
You continue bidding one or two dollars more, until you are bidding $50.
The winning bid is now $51, to me.
Then another bidder sees it and using a service like esnipe, bids $87.21 to be put on Day 7, Hour 23 Minute 58.
There is no change, because eBay can't see that bid.
You come bace on Day 7 Hour 23 and bid $85
The winning bid is now $86 to me. Still.
Meanwhile I am on a hunting trip, with an elk in my gunsights.
At Day 7, Hour 23 Minute 58 esnipe makes that last second bid for $87.21.
You quickly bid $88 but the winner is me at $89.21.
I am delighted that I got the item under my $100 maximum, but I don't know about it until I get back from hunting.
What you see there is a "proxy bidder" (me), a "nibble bidder" (you) and a "snipe bidder". Any one of us could have won, but the winning bid would have to be more than my $100 maximum.
