There is an art to winning items on eBay and bidding early isn’t an option if you are determined to bag your item. Why? Because it gives your rival bidders a chance to respond and up their own bids, so you could end up paying extra for the item unnecessarily. The best tactic, as we will outline here, is to work out the maximum figure that you would pay for the item and then do nothing until the final seconds of the auction. If you then go in with your max bid at the death (which is probably a little higher than the current bid) then by leaving it tactically late, your rival bidders won’t have time to respond and you could end up winning the item for a little higher than the current offer but possibly significantly less than your maximum bid. The main reason we leave it so late is because when people place their maximum offers, eBay will automatically bid up to that amount on their behalf as counter-bids come in. By working out the most you can afford, you can easily bypass this system to scupper your rivals.
