i am winning an eidoscope!

[eddie]

looks like i am winning.....please do not bid against me.....maybe e bay will go down and all your bid snipes will not go through!!!!

my wife is going to kill me!

[Jan Pedersen]

Don't worry Eddie, i will take care of her when you are gone :D

[eddie]

Don't worry Eddie, i will take care of her when you are gone :D

LOL!!!!


what a guy!

[BarryS]

I think my last lens cost $22, so the Eidoscope is beyond temptation. I can't imagine much of a dogfight up in that thin cold air, but good luck.

[Toyon]

Hope it works out alright, as that seller has a dodgy reputation and was formerly selling as Pak Harry.

[Tri Tran]

[QUOTE=eddie;389883]looks like i am winning.....please do not bid against me.....maybe e bay will go down and all your bid snipes will not go through!!!!

Over my dead body...just kidding ! You can have it. Good luck Eddie.

[Dan Fromm]

Eddie, I don't know how high you bid or whether you're really Bidder 1, but as I type this the auction has a little over two days to run. Odds are that Bidder 1 will be outbid, even though not by me.

Those of us who buy lenses on eBay tend to try to, um, steal them. There's no honor among thieves, so announcing you're interested in that lens is simply advertising its availability. Not a smart move.

[IanG]

Interestingly the seller is pak_harry (http://www.apug.org/forums/forum44/47772-ive-had-all-i-can-take-sellers-title-spamming.html), who notoriously spams his titles, grossly over exaggerates lens coverage 90mm Angulons that cover 5x7, 12" Dagors that cover 8x20, he does come across some great lenses though.

Ian

[Pete Roody]

Ah come on. Somebody is going to mortgage his/her house for this lens. Fess up!

[Petzval Paul]

Looks like a great lens. It would be nice if there was a flange, However. I wish you the best of luck, in any case! I lost out on the P&S Synthetic that was on the block last week. $2,300 was just a bit too steep for me. Worth every penny, INHO, but my pockets ain't deep enough.

Please post some images if you are the winner of the eidoscop, endoscope, or however the heck it's spelled! I'd be happy enough to see what it could do!

- Paul

[eddie]

great! so remember no one bid against me and i will have a chance to win! :)

i ma sure EVERYONE knows/sees this lens. it is spelled correctly and is in the right category.....

what do yo you think the chances of bidder one actually winning?! :)

it is all just fun! but i can say i have "owned" an eidoscope for few hours for sure.....now lets get to the last 10 seconds of this auction and see where it goes.

i think we should start a pool on what we think the lens will sell for! i say it will sell for 3 times my bid! :) :) anyone else want to play in the pool?

eddie

[seven]

the last big eidoscope i saw on ebay finished at something like 3k...
what's so cool abot them anyway ? i'm not very impressed by the pictures posted on the web.

[Dan Fromm]

seven, Jim Galli likes them.

[seven]

Dan, i know he does ;)
the question is why.

[eddie]

Dan, i know he does ;)
the question is why.


they make all his photos better than the would be with any other lens...magic! pure magic

[Kerik Kouklis]

I've got two and they are fantastic soft focus lenses. They have a real nice sparkle about them with specular highlights. That said, if you're an f/64 sharpie, you won't like them. 3K???? Holy crap! I got both of mine for <$500

[frank hoerauf]

Eddie good luck with this lens. I have bought from this guy from australia b4 and was very satisfied. He shipped fast and the lens was well packed. I am jealous, wish I had some extra cash I would be bidding against you...haha...........frank

[seven]

eddie - did you won it ?

[Eric James]

It looks as though someone else snagged it with a second left to go in the auction.

[eddie]

nope....i did not....i figured it was going to sell for several thousand dollars so i did not get too crazy....looks like only one guy really wanted it.......it was a bit more than i prefer to spend on it!

i just figured "everyone" would be bidding....go figure.

eddie

[Dan Fromm]

Eddie, most of us here are as nuts as can be, but no two of us are nuts in quite the same way. We don't all fancy soft focus lenses or, for that matter, sharp ones.

Cheers,

Dan

[Jan Pedersen]

Was not me Eddie so Peace ;)

[Jim Galli]

That guy slides_and_slime_4_eva has bought every single soft focus lens for months no matter what the price. He got the Struss, and the Pinkham, and the Perscheid and the.................all for over $2200 except this Eidoscop which was his best bargain for the $$$$ so far. Any one know who he is. I'll be glad when his appetite is satiated. Sheesh it's pointless to bid except to drive up the price he's going to pay.

[Daniel_Buck]

I've never been able to win an ebay bid, someone always grabs it in the last second, I don't know how they do it, even when my bid is with the last 10 second or less and I have no time to actually make a counterbid. :-(

[Daniel_Buck]

I guess ebay permits this? or, is unable to stop it?

Maybe that explains some of the silly high prices every now and then on mundane objects, maybe when two people with the sniping software are trying to snipe the same thing? hah :-D

[seven]

slides_and_slime_4_eva, what a nickname... if you're on the forum - confess :)

Daniel - it's called sniping. just do a web search, pick up one such robot and do the same.

[Dan Fromm]

<snip>
Daniel - it's called sniping. just do a web search, pick up one such robot and do the same.
And remember, Daniel, that if you're not the highest bidder when your bid is placed will have no effect on the outcome.

[Ash]

Sniping uses the ebay protocols, but on a minute level superior-to-human-ability.

So a computer programmer can make a script. That knows the exact second an ebay item finishes, and is programmed to bid in, on, or before that last second. It's still legit because it uses the ebay username, all the correct submission pages we see, but it does it to the last possible moment before auction close.

The only human way to do it is to have two pages open, constantly refresh one page, whilst having your maximum bid on the other, on the "confirm" page. keep refreshing til you get to maybe 3 seconds, and then click 'submit'. If you're lucky you hit it in the last second or two. But a sniper may have got there already and outbid you.

[goamules]

There was a guy last Spring that bid on all antique brass lenses. He got so many people thinking the values were high, you still see residuals. Many people put a $199 starting price on a lens worth half that (to me!) Or high reserves. But I've seen many NOT sell the past month or so. Still, it was frustrating while he was around. He won every lens, didn't matter if he had to bid $350 for a basic magic lantern lens worth $20. Of course, it takes two to tango, so there has to be at least one other thinking these are worth that much. I just don't play the game that way. Money always wins, but patience and sleuth sometimes does. And when Mr. Soft Slime has, say $20,000 invested in lenses, what's he going to do, try to sell them for even more?

Fads come and go. Look at the Dagors, several sold for under $200 the past few weeks. I mean, they made them for what, 50 years? How many people really use these thousands and thousands of Dagors out there?

[Greg Miller]

I've never been able to win an ebay bid, someone always grabs it in the last second, I don't know how they do it, even when my bid is with the last 10 second or less and I have no time to actually make a counterbid. :-(

If you really want an item , the just enter the maximum you are willing to pay for the item in your first, and only, bid (note that this does NOT mean that your bid will max out at the time you submit it). If someone snipes you at the last minute, then your counter bid is automatic and will win in the event of a tie. If the sniper outbids you then you would have lost either way.

Sniping only works (in keeping the final bid amount low) if all other serious bidders are snipers too. If at least one serious bidder submits their maximum bid early on then sniping does not work. Sniping is only a good strategy for people who are willing to win a bid only if it is a steal of a price.

[Dan Fromm]

Greg, who wants to pay full price? We're all thieves at heart. "Steal it or do without" is usually my motto.

Most of the grousing about eBay here comes from would-be pirates who thought they'd found buried treasure and had it snatched away by, um, a greater pirate. It used to be, before all sorts of information was widely diffused, that buried treasure could be found on camera dealers' sites, in scrap dealers' warehouses (contents listed on their sites), and on eBay.uk, .fr, .de, and so on. No longer, the pirates have got better at search and the low-priced sources have been emptied. There still is a little to be found, but its nowhere near as abundant as it used to be.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah - I wasn't really talking about "full price". In this case the bidder indicated he was willing to pay more than he entered as his initial bid, and indicated that he didn't have time to enter a counter bid. I just was pointing out that if he was really willing to pay more than his initial bid, then there was a a different bidding strategy that may have worked better for him.

[Daniel_Buck]

ah, I guess I still have to learn the ropes on ebay then :-)

[goamules]

Sniping only works (in keeping the final bid amount low) if...

I'm not so sure it works even then. Scenario 1:

Three bidders use sniping tools to bid, stating their max is $500, $520, $530. The item is at $20 until 5 seconds before end, when all three bids fly in. What will OhBoy do at that instant? As I understand it, it will "read" the $500/520/530 amounts, then ratchet the winner (530) down to the lowest amount that will "win", or $525.

Senerio 2:

Bidders bid all week, slowly getting the item up to around $400, where it slows down. Someone comes in in the last 5 seconds and bids $450, which OhBoy "reads" and ratchets down to 405 to "win".

[seven]

goamules - timing is crucial. it depends on many things like the sniper software, how well it's server is connected, load of the server, load of the network, ebay's load etc. etc.
so in your scenario 1 the data packets of 530$ guy could arrive first and the other 2 would be discarded with 'offer to low'. 5 seconds before auction end is not the same for every sniper.

[Ole Tjugen]

In scenario #2 there's a fair chance that two of the bidders would go into a bidding frenzy, driving the price up to $786.47, setting a new record for something which retails at $480. :D

[goamules]

Seven, if I understand what I've read, timing doesn't matter, the maximum bid matters. Mr. 530 can be the first in and win because he's highest and the other two are disallowed as "too low." By the same token, Mr 530 can be last in, and win because he's higher than 500 or 520. I think....

[Sheldon N]

Seven, if I understand what I've read, timing doesn't matter, the maximum bid matters. Mr. 530 can be the first in and win because he's highest and the other two are disallowed as "too low." By the same token, Mr 530 can be last in, and win because he's higher than 500 or 520. I think....

Yep, only the maximum bid matters. It doesn't matter how last second the bid is, just matters that it's late enough to avoid manually entered counter bids by other buyers. The reason to "snipe" at an auction is to avoid having less sophisticated ebayer's chip away at your bid and drive the price up higher than it should be.

Here's a real world example reason why you should snipe at an auction...

Scenario 1 -
Item is up for sale at $250, you are willing to pay $400. You enter a $400 bid on the second day of the auction and Ebay auto bids, beating the second highest bidder by $5, taking the price up to $255. The uneducated bidder gets competive about being outbid, and counters at $275. Ebay outbids them on your behalf going to $280. They think "Oh, you want a war! I'll give you a war!" and bid at $300. Ebay outbids them again at $305, whilst you are asleep in your bed. The second bidder, who has had a few pints too many and shouldn't be bidding at this wee hour of the morning, bids $350. Counter bid by Ebay on your behalf at $355. Second bidder throws in the towel and/or passes out. You win the auction at $355.

Scenario 2 -
Item up for sale at $250 you are willing to pay $400. You submit a snipe bid in software (or manually at the last second if you prefer) for $400. In the meantime, bidder 1 and bidder 2 bid back and forth a few times, driving the price up to $285. Bidder 1 holds out until the last minute and makes a counter bid of $290, thinking he's won the auction and getting a good deal. Your "snipe" bid comes in and beats him out, and you win the auction for $295. You got a better price because you avoiding giving the other less educated bidders a target to shoot at.

Two biggest ebay bidding mistakes -

1) Bidding just to beat the current visible bid.
Instead bid once for the most you are willing to pay.

2) Bidding too early.
Presenting your bid early just gives other bidders something to try and beat, artificially inflating the price. Instead, pretend that Ebay is a silent/sealed bid auction house and just submit your max price at the last second, through software or by bidding manually.