If an auction has an end time, it has an end time. Prolonging just because some people want to continue bidding is more unfair than being outsniped. Sniping has little to do with unfair play, and more to do with sticking with your initial maximum bid, keeping from paying too much just because you get excited, and keeps prices from being driven up unecessarily. Its good for everyone. I sincerely hope ebay will not introduce something like what yahoo auctions in japan has.
AMEN!
Sniping is nice for the buyer who actually wins: when an item has a vague market value, forced end-times and sniping can prevent the value from being driven up by too many bids. People snipe because it works and it can get you things for less. For the seller, though, and for the bidder who would have paid more if only given the chance, it can feel a bit like a cheat.
Part of a seller's incentive for putting an item up at a very low starting price and giving buyers a shot at a good deal is that those same buyers might bid it way up. Forced end times damage some of that potential. That's why I bet that if ebay did implement postponed end-times, you would probably see lower starting prices all around.
It's a moot point because no one auctions anything anyway. Sellers already have all of the chips on their side of the table - it's called Buy It Now. Current U.S. Ebay auctions for "Turbo Grafx" in the video games category = 185. BIN listings = 1,307. No forced end times! "Vague market value"? Who cares - shoot for the moon and gouge the heck out of everything! Let those games automatically re-list for years! Or use the recommended pricing Ebay provides to sellers when listings are created (which, btw, happens to have a longer date range than the the completed listing search commonly used by buyers).
Even when video games are auctioned, winning bids below the "market value" are not a common occurrence. First, the thrifty buyer has to wait two months until a seller has the guts to list one of our coveted games in an actual auction with a non-gouging starting point; even then, bidding typically goes to astronomical levels. Thus our patient gamer has to wait even longer, perhaps six to eighteen months, for the stars to align and a rare Turbo game with a low starting price to be listed in an auction that is somewhat poorly described or photographed, creating a lack of early bidding that lulls the noobs into a false sense of security and enables one to snipe the shit out of them before they have a chance to check their credit card balance and revise bids.
Seriously, that's what it takes to get a good deal on ebay these days. It's been a sellers' market ever since BIN's begun to outnumber auctions in the mid-2000's. Buyers are screwed and sniping is one of the last tools left to the honest gamer.
Everyone has the chance to bid whatever a game is worth to them and no one can take that away. The only thing sniping does is take away the chance for noobs and speculators to reconsider their baseless appraisals.
Finally, f*ck "market value."
