I only made it over to eBay recently myself. Figured it out, but was always outbid.
The “trick” with eBay is that you’ve gotta lie low until the bidding clock gets down inside the final minute or less. If you don’t play the “snipe” game, there’ll be many auctions you end up getting outbid on in the last few seconds.
Figure out what’s the MOST you’re willing to pay for the item in question, open two side-by-side windows of the auction page, get all the way up to where you’re set to confirm your bid, all the while refreshing the other window to keep an eye on the current bid amount. If the current bid, stays below your figure, with two seconds or less on the clock, submit your bid.
If the bid goes above your figure as the auction nears its close, decide whether to try to beat it or let the item go.
If you decide to go for it, enter your new figure, and submit it before the time runs out.
Winning depends on how “hot” the item is, and whether any “snipers” were out there who submitted a higher bid than you in the last two or three seconds.
I’ve always maintaned that eBay could be improved 100% if the auction clock were used as a baseline, and bidding would be allowed to continue after expiration as long as successive bids were being submitted within ten seconds of each other. Once a bid were submitted without a following bid within ten seconds THEN the auction would officially end, and the item would go to the last, high bidder.
That approach would replicate the classic auction close, “Going once...going twice...going three times...SOLD!”
ALSO, it would net hgigher final bids, making both the sellers, and eBay more profitable. Buyers would complain about paying more, but they’d benefit from the elimination of this last-second sniping that is characteristic of the site, now.