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Which of you guys (or gals!) is eBay user b****1???

Whoever it is, they have outbid me on four or five eBay items in just the past few days!

RSLancastr wrote:Which of you guys (or gals!) is eBay user b****1???

Whoever it is, they have outbid me on four or five eBay items in just the past few days!

Wrong topic, but I am curious, which decks?

4.of.Clubs wrote:Wrong topic, but I am curious, which decks?

As if!

Nice try, though...

The Ebay screen name is randomly coded by Ebay so competing bidders do not know who is bidding against them. Therefore, it will be hard for anyone to recognize it. When we are logged in we only see our normal screen name., not the Ebay coded version.

I thought it was me at first but I am Ben7217....

DelMagic wrote:The Ebay screen name is randomly coded by Ebay so competing bidders do not know who is bidding against them. Therefore, it will be hard for anyone to recognize it. When we are logged in we only see our normal screen name., not the Ebay coded version.

While this is true, I do remember one auction and when I saw the winning bidders name as "p*****e", I thought that it might've been our own Pierre. Sure enough, he posted his win on here a few days later.

Hmm. Only one five letter word that starts with a "b" comes to my mind. . . .

Bikefanatic wrote:Hmm. Only one five letter word that starts with a "b" comes to my mind. . . .

"bikes"

?

It is very easy to tell. They do not code your name but only scramble the letters. So me for example badpete69, when flyers saw p*****e he actually saw the e and p from Badpete not Pierre. Then just check the number of rating and it's easy to find who bid on what. So Ben7217 I am afraid you are most probably the culprit

Haha sorry but it very well might be.... The last thing I was really in a bidding war for was a brick of sealed Stardust Casino's. The last design before they demo'd it, they are commemorating the casino. I won that auction...

I know nothing of this, tho' I do haunt corners of the ebays.
Nothing like my handle, which are an ol' fambly reference.

Let me give you an example of what I mean... And Flyers3003 I will use you as an example. I am currently watching one of the many Golden Nugget decks on Ebay. I rarely bid on a normal auction until the last second where I swoop in and try to win it. The current highest bidder of this particular auction is 3***3 (43*) By the way let me add that the asteriks do not indicate the number of letters in the name. That 3***3, I would bet anything that it is flyers3003 as when you check his name he has 46 stars rating ( close enough to 43 as the latest ratings have not updated yet)

What say ye mister Flyers am I right?

Actually no, I bid like you - swoop in at the last second. I almost never have any bids up. Plus I'm not looking at Golden Nuggets right now. Maybe some day in the far future, but not now.

hehe then it is not you.. but i have been able to tell many times who is bidding against me in that fashion

just found a Golden Nuggets, clean used casino in Bee, brown wit de 2 chopped corners.
50 cents.*

*nock me dahn wif a fevver*


This in rural Vic. here in Oz.
Preposterous is live an' kickin'

badpete69 wrote:hehe then it is not you.. but i have been able to tell many times who is bidding against me in that fashion

Damn...not only is Pierre the quickest draw on KS, he's also pretty devious on eBay

Thank god he's a pretty decent guy, at least to me anyways

Actually knowing who is bidding against you does not affect in any way the outcome of the auction. But if I see a friend from here bidding against me on an item, I might let him or her have the auction. No need to drive up a price by 20% just to try and win it

I know EXACTLY who you are talking about. Well, not their identity. They usually outbid me - them or r***3 - that's not you is it?

I have (mostly) given up the chase on eBay, but the fact is that I always did better manually swooping auctions than even the automated programs do.

After a month of observation, I don't understand why people insist on bidding up auctions. They are almost always decided in the last minute - if not seconds. Failsafe strategy: decide exactly what the maximum you are willing to pay, and bid that much with 10 seconds left.

You either win it, or your money lives to fight another day. (and often you pay less than your max)

badpete69 wrote:Actually knowing who is bidding against you does not affect in any way the outcome of the auction. But if I see a friend from here bidding against me on an item, I might let him or her have the auction. No need to drive up a price by 20% just to try and win it

Back when I was first on eBay - 1996 or so, when it was still called "Auction Web" - you could see the User Names of all of the bidders. and the User Names of the winners of sold items. I would often find an item that I wanted, but would hold off on bidding if I saw that one of my 52 Plus Joker buddies was already bidding on it.

Man, using eBay was a LOT different back then. This was BPP (Before PayPal), and most sellers insisted on payment by Postal Money Order! A few also accepted personal checks (remember those?). This was also BBIN (Before Buy It Now), so if you wanted an item, you had to bid on it. Most items had Auction End Dates WEEKS after the item was listed, in hopes of creating Bidding Wars

So you often had to wait a few weeks to find out whether or not you had won an item. Then, f you had won it, you had to go down to the Post Office and buy a Money Order in the exact amount owed to the seller, address an envelope to the seller, buy stamps for the envelope, and put it in the mail.

Then you'd wait for the seller to receive the payment (especially time-consuming when the seller was overseas), cash your check or money order, and send you the item (again, via Postal Mail).

It was not uncommon for the time between you bidding on an item and you receiving the item was a month or two!

Looking back on that now, it all seems so... archaic (all that's missing is delivery via Pony Express!), but it was LIGHT YEARS ahead of using postal auctions, which was all there was BEB (Before eBay)!

Oh yeah: And when I went to the Post Office to buy the Money Orders, I had to WALK there and back, and it was uphill, BOTH WAYS!

...and we LIKED it!!

[/GrumpyOldMan]

O.K. so it's not me. I've only bought 1 deck (at a BiN price) in the last couple of weeks.

But, I was just browsing and ran across one that interested me. However, when I clicked on the bid history I believe I found one that your are currently bidding on against B***1. So... not gonna touch that one.

If that's you, good luck!

Mike Ratledge wrote:I have (mostly) given up the chase on eBay, but the fact is that I always did better manually swooping auctions than even the automated programs do.

After a month of observation, I don't understand why people insist on bidding up auctions. They are almost always decided in the last minute - if not seconds. Failsafe strategy: decide exactly what the maximum you are willing to pay, and bid that much with 10 seconds left.

You either win it, or your money lives to fight another day. (and often you pay less than your max)

Yeah, if always wondered why people bid up before the last minute. Sometimes when an item ends at a weird time for me, I put in my max bid early. Then when I find out I've been outbid, I have this urge to bid even higher even though I already decided that the previous amount was my limit Just knowing someone wants it as badly as I do kinda makes me want to win it. I hardly bid for decks, so this is more in relation to other items.

Sher wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote:I have (mostly) given up the chase on eBay, but the fact is that I always did better manually swooping auctions than even the automated programs do.

After a month of observation, I don't understand why people insist on bidding up auctions. They are almost always decided in the last minute - if not seconds. Failsafe strategy: decide exactly what the maximum you are willing to pay, and bid that much with 10 seconds left.

You either win it, or your money lives to fight another day. (and often you pay less than your max)

Yeah, if always wondered why people bid up before the last minute. Sometimes when an item ends at a weird time for me, I put in my max bid early. Then when I find out I've been outbid, I have this urge to bid even higher even though I already decided that the previous amount was my limit Just knowing someone wants it as badly as I do kinda makes me want to win it. I hardly bid for decks, so this is more in relation to other items.

Well, that works against you psychologically, but I understand why you want to bid in that situation. Just don't go to the "I've got to have it" route.

That's why I say to decide exactly what you are willing to pay max - doesn't matter what the item is - and if you can't bid with 10 seconds left, only bid once.

Mike Ratledge wrote:

Sher wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote:Well, that works against you psychologically, but I understand why you want to bid in that situation. Just don't go to the "I've got to have it" route.

Back in "the olden days" (~1996), Stuart Kaplan (co-founder of U.S. Games Systems, and author of the Encyclopedia of Tarot books) frequently bid on decks on eBay. He was fairly well-off, financially (he had one of the largest private collections of Tarot & Playing cards in the country, maybe the world), so when he saw a deck on eBay that he REALLY wanted, he would put in a max bid of a thousand dollars even if the deck was only worth a small fraction of that, knowing that he could afford to spend a thousand on the deck if it came to that.

Needless to say, he almost always got the decks he wanted.

You know, I remember that, Robert. I could not remember his name.

I just got my 18th anniversary member letter.

Mike Ratledge wrote:You know, I remember that, Robert. I could not remember his name.

I just got my 18th anniversary member letter.

I haven't received one yet this year, but I got my 17th a couple of years ago. I think that next year will be my 20th.

(We're getting old, dude.)