Well 2 people dive bombed it with 10 seconds to go and it went for $302.

So it's going to a stranger? Hope they know what they are in for!

It might be back on ebay soon!

No it won't.

Congrats to smeagol on acquiring big blue back into his quiver, again! And for less then what he sold it for. Lol. As long as it stays in the PKF brood, that's fine by me. At least we'll still get to hear stories from time to time of her flights.

Oh my god. Seriously you can't write this stuff! :o

That's awesome..

What a waste of a perfect setup for a gollum joke...

Haha! Well, I couldn't bare seeing it sit @ $202.50 or whatever it was for so long, so I threw in a bid right near the end there. Wasn't expecting it to be the winning bid, but it was. :tumble:

weird, eh?

$232 to $300 :puzzled: Clearly someone didn't understand how auctions work or they were hoping to outbid all at the last minute with a major bump in price. Good on you Sméagol for grabbing it 2 seconds later for $2 more.

Another guy bid $300 and Smeagol bid higher with less than 10 seconds to go so that's why it jumped up so much at the end. My high bid was 232 and had been there for 2-3 days. It's typical bidding technique.

Heh, yeah eBay will automatically bid for you up to your max amount. Either people don't realize that or they just don't care 'cause you'll always see them bidding at the last second in auctions. I'm guilty of it myself. :D

who was the $300 bid I wonder.. anyone on here?

Quote: Originally posted by BeamerBob

Another guy bid $300 and Smeagol bid higher with less than 10 seconds to go so that's why it jumped up so much at the end. My high bid was 232 and had been there for 2-3 days. It's typical bidding technique.

I get that but I think the next logical bid would have been 235 and then 240, etc. Stinks for the seller but its the logical buyer move. Why spend more if you don't have to.

I too am one for last minute sniping and won my pulse with 2 seconds to go before the bid closed (for $5 more than the previous high bid)

You can't do all that if you wait till 10 seconds are left. It only bids you up enough to be one step above the next bidder. I had a max bid of 232, which they both passed. Bidder #2 bid $300 and Smeagol bid something higher than that and beat both of us. Also, they didn't know my high bid was 232 so they would've bid $205 and the auction would be over with me winning since my lurking high bid was $232. Go find some auction on an iphone or something and watch it end, then you can see how it works.

The reason for sniping is to prevent people from countering back.

You're supposed to bid exactly as much as you're willing to spend, and then see if anyone else is willing to spend more. When you participate in this fashion, you get an email informing you that you were outbid. Human nature will often drive people to up their bids because people don't like to lose. To short circuit this and prevent a bidding war, many people will lurk and wait to "snipe" at the last second.

Both approaches are valid. On the one hand, if you only bid what your'e willing to pay, you can't lose (but you may not win)... on the other hand if you try to snipe, you run the risk of not going high enough, but you prevent someone else countering your max offer.

I probably could've made all the sniping irrelevant by bidding $400 and would've won by paying $2.50 more than Smeagol's highest bid. I was a casual bidder though and would gladly buy the kite and pay shipping for a total of $275 if interest was low. But lucky for the seller, there were 2 other bidders willing to pay more.

I'm just glad she's still in "the loop".


I had visions of some first timer buying Blu and trashing her.

Smeagol had the upper hand on this auction. He was able to bid higher without having to compensate for the cost of shipping onto the price. Just a 30min drive to pick it up.