I have been sniped.....

When getting my lego I have a few ways of buying it, could go direct to LEGO and to be honest it may well be the surest way of getting brand new LEGO, but it will be the most expensive, also when they retire sets, you can simply can't buy them from them.

I could trawl round every car boot at 6am on a Sunday morning, and where for me it would be fun, it is very much like panning for gold.

So for certain bricks I use bricklink and for old sets I have been using EBAY, as I have found prices on AMAZON to be astronomical, I think their algorithm knows I want LEGO so it triples the price.

Now you always learn from your experiences, case in point was last night, I was waiting to see if I would win 3 items I had bid on, I had set a maximum bid, was the only bidder with a low initial bid. So thought hopefully I will get 3 items for the stadium at a great price.

With 20 minutes to go I went off and did something else on the Internet. Came back and the first to finish item had already finished. I had lost it, out bid by 50p only 2 bids on the item. mine and then the winning bid. Annoyed but as this wasn't my favourite of the three thought "Oh well" best wait around and monitor the other 2 as they only had a few minutes to go.

Minutes turned into seconds, then with 3 seconds to go a bid came in, again like some psychic ninja, the other bidder had one bid 50p more than mine, I had no time to respond (I am sure in the old days of EBAY it used to extend the time of the bidding) another item lost.

Turned to the last item, same again, with seconds to go, and also one bid 50p more than mine, and bang it's gone.

I was all for reporting it, when investigating it was one account, for all 3 items. Did a google search thinking if this had happened to others, and discovered a practise called sniping. As described it is a system where you can put an automatic bid in, for the last minute it will then trump any other bids placed as folks would think they are getting it for the low price, and the other person has no time to respond.

I had put in my maximum bid for two of the items, one of them I would have stretched a bit more for. But I do have to watch my budget and thought although it's annoying, I really don't want to be sucked into a bidding war. I paid I think a little more than I wanted for a football pitch because I had lost several before, only to win one the next day for less than half the price.

So lesson learnt, be patient, and set my maximum bid I would pay for the item. If I win, great, if I get sniped, so be it. But don't just try to go for a bargain, be realistic in what you would pay for the item.

Hope this helps.