Bidding History (Highest bids first)
User ID Bid Amount Date of Bid
wmas1960 (50) $4.76 Aug-09-01 12:26:23 PDT
npmaven (242) $4.51 Aug-09-01 11:51:24 PDT
wmas1960 (50) $3.50 Aug-03-01 21:49:23 PDT
priddegrl2001 (38) $2.24 Aug-08-01 20:03:20 PDT

Remember that earlier bids of the same amount take precedence.

You are very perceptive. I thought you were wrong but when I reread the bid history, (posted above), I realized that the $4.51 was the incremental responses to my snipe bid. The other person obviously had max bid to $4.51. My win bid was obviously $4.76.

As for your other two comments, Yes, I did recognize the possibility I could have been outbid and for the third comment about saving others from overbidding, If the other person had already outbid me, well, he/she would have saved me.

I don't know if I ever said that sniping was unfair. I may have said, or at least I meant, that some people feel it is unfair. I sometimes feel that way when it happens to me. However. It is within the rules of eBay, There is no real difference between sniping and when someone notices an auction and in the last minutes and places a bid near the close. As you mention, it can backfire on you and can cut both ways. When you snipe, there is no guarantee that the other bidder has not already outbid you and you can still loose. It has been said that if people fully understood the mechanics of eBay as compaired to a live auction than sniping might not be necessary. Each bidder has an equal chance to snipe or defend if they understand how it works. I do not know if the technology exists right now but as eBay continues to evolve, and computer technology gets better in the consumers hands than I see a day where eBay works like the the computers used by day traders in the stock market. A day when every eBayer will have live streaming access to the status on all their bids. You will be able to have the ability to have your computer snipe and defend till the absolute last second of the auction. Some buyers have software that will do some of this. I don't know the full capabilities of these software programs etc. I have found now that my best manual response was t-50 sec. That is when I posted a bid that got an error message. By the time my screens recycled and I was able to place a new bid I got that bid in with 12 seconds to spare. I feel anything less than that I would have run out of time or had a stroke, Don't know which.