Ok, who swooped me?

[=Enigma=]

I wanna know which one of my Z brothers swooped me on the valve adjustment tools listed on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260071738508

[geezer]

I was watching that but thought they went for too much. Might be easier to use a specialty set like that, but you can get by without.

[=Enigma=]

I agree, I wasn't willing to go over $61. I'm going to make one of my own with some spare wrenches I have laying around.

[geezer]

I must have hundreds of specialty tools made for different purposes over the years. It's sometimes easier and quicker to make your own, and always cheaper. Every once in a while I find something I built and don't have a clue why.

[DRBall]

Was not me but I was bidding too...Oh well I wish we could get the part number or find an american replacement...Or a Britsh tool. The TR6 might have the same tool requirements...

[EScanlon]

Adam;

Without intent to flame, nor to vilify, but if you were willing to pay more than $100 then why didn't you bid that higher amount?

Obviously someone was willing to pay AT LEAST $2.50 more....maybe LOTS more, but IF or HOW MUCH is irrelevant, all they need to do is bid one bid increment higher than you to win the auction in the time permitted.

If the tools were only worth $100 to you, and $60 to others, then it's simply logical that someone else willing to pay MORE than that would do so and therefore win the auction. What if they bid $500?

The notion that if you had known that someone was going to bid higher than you then you would have bid higher is simply totally foolish ILL-logic.

Unfortunately, that is what "sniping" preys upon.

If you would have been willing to bid higher....then you should have done so. A snipe bid will only go as high as the maximum allowed by the new bidder. If that maximum is higher than what you were willing to pay...and that's the KEY to this, what YOU are WILLING to pay...then they would win the auction, plain and simple. If the snipe bid's maximum is below YOUR maximum....YOU would win the auction, although at a higher amount.

If you're purposely under-bidding, thinking that you can always increase your bid if someone out-bids you, you're fooling yourself into thinking you "Got a GREAT bargain" just because you didn't bid what you thought you would have to pay for the item. Bid what the item is worth to you, and not a penny more. If no one else bids against you, you WILL get those outrageous bargains.

And if someone else wants it more than you...they will simply have to ante up the cash to get it away from you. And when it happens, and it will, then you will know that you didn't over pay for the item EITHER.

A snipe bid combats one thing and one thing only...the furious bidding war that ensues when someone fools themselves into thinking that nobody else would / should / could bid higher, and that if they had enough time, they would just "up" their bid. Then it gets into ...$5 more, then $20, then...

That's where you see the furious $1800 dash auctions, or the $325 European Tail-Lights (see link at the bottom). The winning bidder came back at least half a dozen times...each time upping his bid a bit more, and a bit more, and probably sweating the whole time worried whether he'd win or not. So no doubt, that person had a bad case of doubt BEFORE he bid and all throughout the process. If he'd just bid $350 the first time he bid he might have been out bid, but then again, maybe not.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=015&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=250068801869&rd=1&rd=1

Just my 2¢

E

[naviathan]

Why do you need special tools? I did mine with plain old wrenches and feelers gauges. Just the basic stuff that came in my craftsman set.

[Victor Laury]

Why do you need special tools? I did mine with plain old wrenches and feelers gauges. Just the basic stuff that came in my craftsman set.

Me too. And I even bought the special bent wrench from MSA. Used it once and never again. Now it's two wrenchs and a feeler gauge. Although I did buy and have started using a stepped feeler gauge.