Accidental bids

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:55 pm

Have any of you accidentally input the wrong bid into Yahoo Japan, eBay, Mandarake, etc. by mistake?

A couple days ago I accidentally input a 226,000 yen bid instead of the 22600 yen I had planned.

Good thing the auction only ended at 17000 yen. I became a little worried there.

RoboFlonne · Post by **RoboFlonne** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 12:18 am

Once did a 44000 on a 4400!!

Glad no one else bid on it!!

darksuzaku · Post by **darksuzaku** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:58 am

fortunately for both of you YJ allows you to lower (but not cancel) your bid as long as it's still higher than the current bid. So if you detect your mistake soon enough you can correct it.

Of course, this is if you use your own account. If you are using a deputy it depends on if the deputy allows it or not.

Maiko · Post by **Maiko** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:54 am

darksuzaku wrote:fortunately for both of you YJ allows you to lower (but not cancel) your bid as long as it's still higher than the current bid. So if you detect your mistake soon enough you can correct it.

Of course, this is if you use your own account. If you are using a deputy it depends on if the deputy allows it or not.

Actually, that's good to know, considering I use my own Y!JP account for certain auctions. Do you know, though, if anywhere on your account it publicly remarks this or keeps track of when you do it or affect your general feedback score- like ebay does? ( retracted bid score which usually doesn't look good in the eyes of sellers, especially if you have more than one ).

darksuzaku · Post by **darksuzaku** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 8:47 am

Actually, that's good to know, considering I use my own Y!JP account for certain auctions. Do you know, though, if anywhere on your account it publicly remarks this or keeps track of when you do it or affect your general feedback score- like ebay does? ( retracted bid score which usually doesn't look good in the eyes of sellers, especially if you have more than one ).

Well, i don't think it gets recorded anywhere, but again, it's not like retracting a bid as you do on ebay (retracting bids is not allowed on YJ). I believe it's just part of the whole thing. If fact, if you think about it it doesn't affect on anything on the auction as you can't place a bid lower than the current bid.

mmm, now, the only thing that reflects the change made is that the number of bid count goes up by one for each bid made, but even examining the log nobody will know if you were raising or lowering your previous bid. In fact, i know people who use this trick to find out the maximum bid of a rival using very few bids (you place an outrageous bid that will outbid the rival and then you lower it right to the current maximum. Of course this is a double edge sword as the rival's bid can be very high, and there are other better and safer ways to know someone else's maximum bid ...... all thanks to a few flaws on the YJ auction system)

kira · Post by **kira** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:33 pm

i done that both on ebay and yj.

Post by **sensei** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:19 pm

darksuzaku wrote:
there are other better and safer ways to know someone else's maximum bid ...... all thanks to a few flaws on the YJ auction system)

Mmmmm?

Sensei shows a purely academic interest in the topic.

Actually, I've noticed two CCS bidders in an interesting tango recently. Bidder 1 will put down a bid on a certain item, then bidder 2 (always the same one) will bid up just to bidder 1's maximum, then stop. I don't know what's going on here, but it intrigued me how bidder 2 knew when to stop. I suppose you could "nibble" up a bid at a time, but your use of the plural in the above quote implies that there is more than one way.

RoboFlonne · Post by **RoboFlonne** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:11 pm

On Ebay you can bid, retract the bid, then rebid!!

It's kinda illegal though.

Also is bidder 1 someone Called Sensei?

Elfstalker · Post by **Elfstalker** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:30 pm

I did the same thing as Keropi (20,000 instead of 2,000), and it scared me witless. It was for an Inu Yasha cel, and I was afraid that a major bid war was gonna happen, but thankfully I won it for what I should've entered.

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:41 pm

Yes...what Darksuzaku said interests me too. Maybe that's the method the bidder used on me earlier.

Concerning that accidental 226,000 yen bid I did earlier, in that case it was for an anime that I had never seen artwork from before. So I had no idea what crazy amount it could end up going for. That's the part that made me a little nervous.

Who knows how much the first item on auction will go for?

Or at least...the first piece online being popularly viewed.

naturalgrace · Post by **naturalgrace** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 10:54 pm

I once accidently bid 500,000 on a Naruto auction on Mandarake. I meant to bid 50,000. I thought at first that it wouldn't be a problem, but then the high bid shot up within about one minute to over 100,000. And kept going higher.

I felt really bad, because I knew at that point there was no way I was going to be able to pay the final amount and I was going to have to cancel my bid (and get banned from Mandarake as a result).

Fortunately, some kind and wealthy soul outbid me by 100 for the win. I've always been a lot more careful with my bids since.

redwolf · Post by **redwolf** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:17 pm

That was incredibly lucky... and I am glad I do not collect Naruto.

Keropi 226,000?? You were quite lucky as well. What was the show?

I've yet to enter the wrong amount, although I think about the possibility every time I bid. Thankfully, I have a limit on my maximum bid that will prevent me from ever accidentally hitting six digits of yen.

Who knows how much the first item on auction will go for?

Yup...they often seem to be crazy low (no one is looking yet??) or crazy high (the first Fate TV auction I saw was 40,000 for three mediocre sketches+three not shown).

darksuzaku · Post by **darksuzaku** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:40 pm

Well, now that seems to be an "academic" interest on this, i'll explain a little about this, but not much of the 2nd one because it's really a very dirty and low trick that none of us would like to be usd on us -_-

As far as i know this can only be done if you use your own YJ account, not through a deputy automatic system, but you never know.

1st trick -> Place an outrageous bid to discover someone elses's bid. Used by people on auctions they are very interested to win. Lets say the current bid is 1000 Yens and there's someone else you believe bidding high. So you place an outrageous bid of lets say 100000 Yens that should outbid him for sure. The auction goes up to 13000 Yens and you are winning. Then you just have to lower your maximum bid to 13000 or 13500 Yens. The effect is that you have outbidded the other person with only 2 bids, what makes him believe that you are going high for this item. The double edge sword thing is that if the other guy had placed a bid of 90000 Yens you are screwed. This cannot be done on ebay because you would have to retract your bid, and that leaves track of your actions. The "offended" person could then take action against you.

2nd trick -> A very low trick that should not be done ever...... In YJ when you place a bid that doesn't make you take the lead the system automatically proposes you the amount of the next bid. By noticing the amount proposed and with some practice you can know if your next bid will outbid the person in the lead or not.

No more, i'm not giving more details about it. Fortunately it's not a 100% guaranteed system as there are several ways to "protect" yourself against it. And those are:

1- Never place your maximum bid right away, and when you bid, use whenever as posible the minimum proposed bid even if you have to place 10-20 bids. This can guarantee that you won't be a victim of this trick.

2- Placing bids with odd increments like bidding 1330 Yens on an auction for 1000 Yens. Sometimes if you use these odd bids that are different than the proposed by the system your rival can become confused and srew up, but if he's experienced this won't be a problem for him. A minor risk of placing odd bids is that i have heard that sellers sometimes don't like them.....

ReAnimator · Post by **ReAnimator** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 1:29 am

I think those are all great pointers, darksuzaku.

On the other hand, for me it basically always comes down to one issue: how much am I willing to pay? So my strategy has always been to bid the max amount I feel the cel is worth… anything higher and it’s overpriced. That way I’m always in a positive mindset whether I win or lose. If I lose, it’s only because someone paid more for the cel than I feel it’s worth. Very simple. And this way I almost never have to get up in the middle of the night to fight a bid war.

On the topic at hand… I had a panic attack similar to Naturalgrace’s during a Mandarake Auction when I bid 400,000yen instead of 40,000yen for an auction that was hovering around 20,000yen. Sure enough, somebody came chasing after me and I had to sit there and watch the auction extend over and over again… 30 minutes of agony until it finally closed at 77,000yen: almost double what I had decided it was “worth.” All because I typed an extra damn “0.”

So much for strategy!

Post by **sensei** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 11:17 am

darksuzaku wrote:Well, now that seems to be an "academic" interest on this, i'll explain a little about this, but not much of the 2nd one because it's really a very dirty and low trick that none of us would like to be usd on us -_-

Thank you! This clarifies the situation and in fact doesn't surprise me as I've seen other bidding systems where a similar dirty trick revealed similar information. (One reason I stay clear of them.)

Fortunately it's not a 100% guaranteed system as there are several ways to "protect" yourself against it.

Yes, and I've come up with some of my own. However, the best is to know what you're ready to spend for a given item, and sometimes bid it, and sometimes wait until the very end to bid it. (And to keep good notes on when the very end is, as I've more than once arrived at YJ ten minutes to an hour after the auction in question finished.)

RoboFlonne, no, Bidder 1 was not Sensei, though in one case he was Bidder 3. I had this happen once on Mandarake, though.