While culling through records of winners of lower-cost gift cards on Beezid ($10 - $25) that attract conservative, newbie bidders, I noticed an interesting strategy: the auctions were often won within 20 - 30 bids by a bidder who set a BOM (autobid) from early on in the auction, prior to the last 4 minutes, often well before. It looks like they preset 25 bids (the max) at up to 30 minutes before the auction, walked away and wagered a pittance of bids that newcomers would freak out right away at the autobidding and bow out. Which is exactly what a lot of them did.
To counteract this strategy, you can try one of two things: first, wait for the auction to begin for real (within the last minute), and wait for the autobidding to run up. If the newcomers flee in terror, bid against the autobidder, counting how many he has left. If he's awake and paying attention, you'll know by the 25th bid. If he set it and left, you only have to risk a half dozen bids to find out. If he's there, decide if you want to spend 50 more bids on the item. If he's not there, you may just snag it up by default. Or, you can try this strategy for yourself by setting an autobid for the max bids (25 for small items) on an auction with no other autobidders set, and see if it works for you.
To check for pre-set autobids, click on an auction that is still 15 minutes or longer (in Beezid), and if you see bids already placed on that auction, go inside the auction to see if one of those bidders is set to Autobid. That's an auction to watch.
For more helpful observations of penny auctions, get my book Penny Wise - Penny Foolish.
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