Terry,

This issue will never be settled. The only way it will be is if Ebay takes a stand on it. I don't do Yahoo auctions, but was told that if there are any bids in last ten seconds, the auction is automatically extended for 5 minutes.Rather that is true, I don't know. I have many different thoughts on sniping. I emply alot of different bidding strategies on ebay.

I know who the snipers are and sometimes it's me. When I first got sniping software it was to save me money. I am gone from home on trains for 24-36 hours. When I would bid on higher dollar ashtrays I would have to put in a high proxy bid before leaving. I would consider who I thought would bid and bid accordingly. Enter, "Mr. Too Much Time On His Hands." This individual that had no intention of winning the bid would sit and put in bids, sometimes up to 100 bids. When he would see the bid increment change to an uneven amount he would know he had bumped up against my high bid. Then he would stop.

In many cases I knew my bid would prevail for a number of reasons,and because of one individual I would end up paying thru the nose for the tray. It didn't take too long to get my fill of this crap.If they were legitimate bids, well, so be it. After having this happen repeatedly it was hardly a coincidence that he never won an auction. I just didn't feel it was necessary to keep paying my high bid, auction after auction, so one jerk could get his jollies.

Ashtray collecting is a much narrower collecting field and you get to know the collectors and their bidding styles. Likewise, you know how each one bids, you know if they have the tray. So, bidding strategy is much easier than with chips, I am guessing.

Just one man's experience and opinion. Right or Wrong, I don't know...

Mark