Although bidding based on time and EBay usage can bear fruit, the opposite is also true in peak times. If a few similar auctions are ending the same night, then one or more of them might get lost in the shuffle. Interested EBay buyers may snap up the early ones, leaving the scraps for others. Here is the way most of these auction buildups tend to progress: The first item is usually hotly contested by a large group of snipers with the winner usually paying a hefty premium for their victory. Subsequent auctions are far less active, with the buying crowd using them as a barometer of overall price levels for the night. These can be referred to the “post-shock” auctions and it is here where smart bidders can possibly win for far less than the first auction went for. By the time the final auction rolls around, it is back to the same voracious bidding of the first auction, as many have discovered it is the last one for the night.

The above scenario only applies to the really hot items like overclockable CPUs, high-end 3D cards or low priced SDRAM. For more common auction items, having a large pack of them end on the same night can lead to even better values, since sniping will likely not be as large a problem. Smart bidders simply observe how the first few auctions progress, then place a proxy bid or snipe appropriately at the subsequent items. Since winning bidders will continually be dropping out of the race, there will be less of an EBay market for these later auctions, and the inadvertent creation of a glut can pay dividends for the interested parties.

All's fair in love, war and EBay, so if competing bidders cannot get online, then that is something many bidders use to their own advantage. EBay auctions end at their allotted time, no matter if the system goes down for hours, or the entire East Coast experiences an Internet brownout. I have been on EBay during a few such instances and there was bargain hunting galore. It was like a party that no one came to, and a few smart EBay'ers probably outfitted their PCs for a fraction of the retail cost.

On the flip side, EBay itself is not the most stable online entity and downtimes occur at random intervals. While it is impossible to time such random crashes, if a bidder currently holds a few items at exceptionally low bids, then a system crash can actually be quite beneficial. If EBay goes down and does not come back up again until after these auctions have closed, then the bidder won them by default, and at the pre-crash bid. With the growing amount of last-second bidding, combined with EBay's unyielding auction ending times, a smart bidder can sometimes use these factors to their advantage.

For those serious about getting deals on EBay it is important to know who you might be up against. If an interesting auction is found, before doing anything further, be sure to see who is currently bidding on it. Use the Bidding History to check out the current high bidder as well as the previous bidders who could reenter the party at any time. Feedback is a useful tool for this research, and finding out what products the other bidders have won in the past can illustrate their buying habits, as well as their potential for excessive bidding and sniping. If the current bidders are not big PC buyers and concentrate on Beanie Baby auctions, a higher bid may ward them off. Conversely, if the high bidder has been paying exorbitant prices for high-end hardware, then it might be a better use of time to just to move on to another auction.