BidSlammer Blog and Help Center » Ways you can lose

“Perfect Penny” Values for Sniping

jay — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:22:55 +0000

Bidders often wonder how many pennies they should put after the dollar value of their bid. Do you always ask yourself, “Should I bid $24.10, $24.50, or $24.98? What is the perfect penny value? Do pennies even matter?”

You are not alone. eBay veteran “puppetplay” still can’t decide after 12 years and hundreds of intense bidding wars. ”It seems like the more I want the item, the more pennies I add,” he says, “but then I come back around to zero and it starts over. Help!”

At BidSlammer, we call this the “perfect penny,” or optimum penny value. Since eBay’s inception, bidders of all kinds (not just snipers) have debated this: If such a value exists, knowing it would give that bidder a big advantage.

Just for grins, I decided to research this using BidSlammer’s database, which has millions of executed snipes using a variety of currencies and prices. Two things immediately became clear:

First, yes - an optimum penny value definitely exists! And using it increases chances of winning up to 40%.

And second, there is a grand conspiracy against anyone trying to figure it out. Thanks to all you wonderful, patient BidSlammer customers who patiently waited more than two months for this article to publish.

Anyway — get this, folks — out of 716 guessers, not one person guessed the “correct” answer?!

That doesn’t make sense: Chance is 1 in 100, regardless of what number you are guessing! But 0 out of 716? As I said, it’s a conspiracy. And it just gets weirder…

The Perfect Penny Value: How Does Your Number Rate?

Okay! Here is the chart with all the answers. My high school science teacher would be proud. If your brain turns to slush, just skip to the next section. If you are hungry for more, you can see the spreadsheet data here.

(Click the picture to enlarge.)

Reading the Chart

It takes a moment to absorb the graph. It’s basically a 3D XY scatter chart. The X and Y axes are self-explanitory, and the third dimension is the size of each bubble. The bigger the bubble, the more bidders used that penny value.

The best value is 24¢ or 99¢

You can see 24¢ towering over the other values in terms of win rate (15% to 40% higher). For any other value there is no obvious advantage (except 4¢, which we will address below). Also, the small dot for 24¢ tells us that very few (if any) people know about it and/or use it as a statistical advantage.

Stay away from 00¢ and 50¢

The big size of the dots for 00¢ and 50¢ mean they are very popular, but look how low they are low on the win rate scale. In fact, one of the worst values you can choose is 00¢; it has a 30% success rate.

If you habitually snipe using 00¢, by just adding three more cents and using 4¢ you can gain a 30% additional advantage; 99¢ is not a bad choice, but padding up to the next 24¢ will give you the best edge.

My Explanation

To understand why 24¢ has such a high win rate, first please make sure you understand our very brief excellent minimum-bid-increment example. Here is an abbreviated summary of MBI’s.

Current Price	Minimum Bid-Increment (US)
0.01 – 0.99	0.05
1.00 – 4.99	0.25
5.00 – 24.99	0.50
25.00 – 99.99	1.00
100.00 – 249.99	2.50
250.00 – 499.99	5.00

So let me remind you that we are talking about situations where the dollar amount is the same or near the same. Since at high dollar values, heck, you can be within $5 of the bid and your penny value will definitely matter.

So, to beat the odds you must maximize your opportunity. To do this, bid as far to the right of the next relevant slice as possible. The right-most point in the $1-$4.99 range is 25¢ — so it is no surprise that the best penny value is 24¢.

See? That’s why 24¢ wins the most often: It is the theoretical best value to guarantee a win over the other bids (given that you are using the same dollar value, or at high-dollar values, within a few dollars).

Now here’s the part I can’t explain very well. Why these values, especially 24¢, still hold up strong at prices well into the hundreds. In other words, if I look at the MBI table, you expect 99¢ to be the dominant penny value. But even if I do the graph and disregard items under $100, the value of 24¢ is still prominent.

After looking over this data dozens of different ways it is obvious that the penny value is driven by human factors, not just the MBI. I think sellers and buyers are just pushing that penny value to be 99¢ or $1.00. Think about it: Sellers start items ending in $0.99 and buyers love to bid 99¢ according to the chart above. Look at any bid history for a popular item and you will see this trend. Someone is always bidding 00 or 99¢ which sort of “resets” the window.

Summary (the Short Version)

In competitive bidding, the dollar amount matters, but so does the penny value:

Statistics show that for US auctions, the value 24¢ has a higher success rate across items than any other values: At least 10% and as much as 40%.
From a mathematical perspective, the numbers are based on maximizing the statistical likelihood of a win, based largely on the minimum bid increment window. In plain English, though, you just need to be doing the opposite of what other people are doing.
Never, ever bid right on the dollar. There be dragons there. For that matter, never bid right on the boundary of the bid-increment table. For US dollars, that is 00, 25, 50, 75.
Memorize the MBI’s (minimum bid increments) for your currency type. Always consider the minimum bid increment in every situation.

It works, folks. Have fun and enjoy it! And don’t tell anyone.

Thanks for your feedback and support!

We welcome your questions, comments, or insights. Feel free to post below or in the forum. If you participated in the guessing contest, make sure to check the list of winners to see if you won a T-Shirt.

Best of luck on eBay!

Bullet-Proof Your Snipe Account!

jay — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:47:45 +0000

A Guide to 20 Ways You Missed That eBay Snipe!

Hopefully you are not reading this article because you were “slammed,” or outbid on an item that you really wanted. Well, don’t fret. In this article, we will discuss 20 ways that you can lose an important item because your eBay account is not set up properly!

We are going to bulletproof your BidSlammer account so that you can significantly reduce your chances of missing out on an item that you want. Even if you are an eBay guru, you will learn something important, as most of the reasons are not trivial.

Remember, when you snipe, you are “bidding blind” — and you will not know what the problem is, if any, until the bid is actually placed and it’s too late. Notice we say “outbid,” not “missed.” You are not missing the snipe since it is placed on time. Instead, you are being outbid or blocked for a variety of reasons.

If you experience a situation where you receive an unusual error message, we invite you to post it here. Stay current by subscribing to the thread. These actions will help us refine our product, eliminate errors, and keep up with the ever-changing world of eBay!

Ok, let’s get started bulletproofing. Here are the 20 ways you might have missed that snipe!

Reason 1. You did not meet the minimum bid increment.

The high bid does NOT always win! Even long-term eBay-ers have to be reminded about the minimum bid increment.

The minimum bid increment is an amount of money that eBay adds on top of the current price to keep things interesting, that is, to make sure that the price of the item escalates proportionally. The increment is proportional to the Current Price.

Missing the minimum bid increment is the number one reason for a misunderstanding. In this situation, the snipe is placed on time and the amount of the bid is greater than the current price, however the customer does not win the item because he or she did not meet the minimum bid increment.

In fact, when you snipe a competitive item, make sure that you add enough money to account for several bid increments. A good sniper will memorize the bid increment table for her country!

For more information on the subject of minimum bid increments, see our really cool help page.

Reason 2. Your eBay password is really bad.

If your eBay password is any English word or proper noun, like your name or user ID, followed by a number, such as “JOSH77″, then you MUST change it immediately at eBay. eBay may occasionally throw up a random warning page indicating that your password may be susceptible to fraud, and so on. Our policy is to honor the warnings by not executing the snipe. We believe this policy keeps you out of trouble.

To avoid this problem, make sure you use a non-trivial password at eBay.

Reason 3. You forgot to link your PayPal e-mail address to your eBay account.

Sellers can block unwanted bidders. Every serious sniper will link their PayPal accounts to eBay. Otherwise, your sniper will result in this error page.

To configure this, just go to: My eBay –> Account tab –> Seller Account -> [Edit].

Please note that we never know why you are blocked. It is up to you to determine this, as it is a personal matter between you and the seller.

Reason 4. You forgot to confirm your primary PayPal address.

It’s very easy to confirm your address at PayPal. Just go to your PayPal account, and click on your link by your account balance. Then follow the steps to verify your account.

Reason 5. You asked the seller a dumb question.

You will know your seller blocked you personally, when you receive the error message, “unfortunately, this seller has decided that you are not permitted to bid on their listings.”

It is only natural for a seller to block you if you ask questions like “Does this support Macintosh?” Said one seller, “If the buyer is reliant on me for basic information about the product, they will distract me from future sales should the problem continue.” Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Reason 6. You upset your seller on a previous transaction.

If your complaint is: ”There is no way I was blocked from this transaction! I have bought from the seller previously!” For us, that’s the clincher: Most likely, something you said in the last transaction concerned the seller. They usually won’t admit to it, to avoid conflict. But you can confirm the problem on your own easily enough, by attempting to bid on another one of the seller’s items.

Reason 7. You had more than 2 Unpaid Item Strikes in one year.

You can be blocked for having 2 Unpaid Item Strikes in 12 months, so keep a clean record.

Reason 8. You violated one or more eBay policies.

You can be blocked for having 2 or more policy violations in one year such as listing an item in the wrong category. There are buyer-type and seller-type violations and they both count against you when you are sniping, so be warned.

Reason 9. You are registered in a country to which the seller doesn’t ship.

Again, read your item description. Not everyone ships to your country. We see lots of bid losses for this reason. Sniping is not a substitute for reading the item page!

Reason 10. You used a PayPal security key.

You definitely must turn off your PayPal security key if you are going to snipe, since it uses Captcha. Captcha is the sniping equivalent of a bulletproof vest, nothing can get through. So that if you are using this, make sure to disable it for sniping.

Reason 11. You made a wimpy bid on a reserve auction.

This is actually a very interesting topic. A lot of snipers ask us if we can add a feature to beat the reserve price no matter what. This is called climbing the reserve. We choose not to implement the service for the following reason.

Let’s say you are bidding on a car on eBay motors, and the seller has jacked up the reserve price so high such that he obviously does not intend to sell the car. Then when you lose the auction as the high bidder, he writes you and says “Hey, sorry you didn’t win, but contact us to make a deal!” Arg. Lucky you didn’t place an “infinite snipe” or you would probably be sorry.

So in short, trust us: You definitely do not want a feature to climb the reserve. Just use the good old basic rule: Bid the maximum you are willing to pay.

Reason 12. You forgot to check for proxy bids.

If you see a very rare and popular item worth $1000, and its current price is $10, don’t be tricked into thinking a bid of $100 or even $500, will even show up on the bid history list at the time of your snipe.

A surprising number of bidders forget about proxy bids. A proxy bid means that regardless of what amount you specify on an auction to bid, eBay will only raise the cost of the item the smallest amount necessary to justify their minimum bid increment.

Even if there is only one other bidder (besides you) on the auction, that other buyer could have placed a massive proxy bid of $1500 or more on the item. In that case, your snipe would execute for $1000; eBay would then set the current price to $1000, requiring a bid of $1025 to win. So the other bidder would win for $1025.

Reason 13. Your feedback rating is too low.

Sellers can specify a feedback rating threshold to ignore your bid if your account has low feedback. If a seller bothers to set this, it is usually set at 5 or 10.

Reason 14. You bid on an item that was no longer available.

Every so often, a seller takes down the item you wanted to snipe. They can take the item down for any one of four reasons, some of which would have given you the right to purchase the item at the Current Bid price.

However, this would not apply to you, since you had not actually have a bid on the item when it was canceled.

Reason 15. You bid full price on a Buy-It-Now.

EBay rejects your bid if you bid full price on a Buy-It-Now listing, expecting you to choose the BUY NOW option, not the PLACE BID option. We use the PLACE BID option.

To get around this, place a very small bid on the Buy-It-Now listing manually in order to remove the Buy-It-Now status and change the listing to a regular auction.

Reason 16. You overbid on a Buy-It-Now.

This is the same explanation is reason 15, but a totally different scenario. And eBay gives a totally different error message.

Reason 17. You tried to snipe an Immediate Payment listing.

You can’t snipe these items since you have to pay right when you bid.

Reason 18. You didn’t have a credit card on file with eBay.

EBay does not require credit cards for buyer accounts, but sellers can opt to block you if you don’t have them.

Reason 19. You bid on an item with country-based export regulations.

Read your item description carefully.

Reason 20. You bid too low.

We saved the most obvious reason for last. Make sure you bid aggressively, to overcome several bid increments.

Thank You for Reading!

Please report any new information you have to this blog or in our Community Forum.