Regarding "snipe" bidding, Spencer Chase wrote [070413 MMDigest]:

> It is fun to check the current bidding and guess what people
> will bid based on their bidding history.

How many times have you been bidding on an item and as the numbers
go up, you begin to watch people drop out.  Then for days you see no
movement at all.  So you bid one more time, adding a few or a couple
of hundred to cover yourself.  Then "bam", someone, who never even
bid on the item, beats you by $1.00, with 3/10ths of a second left.
[eBay is] unlike a real auction [where] the bidding is over when the
last man is left standing.

How about extending an auction 10 minutes every time a bid is placed
within that 10 minutes.  It's a win, win situation -- snipers no longer
have to sneak around and hide their identity, because we won't want
to kill them; the sellers come out ahead, because the price of the
item may increase, and E-bay, not that they need the money, wins also.
Oh, did I mention I "hate" snipers!

Howard Jensen