How Common is eBay Sniping?

A study by researchers from Stanford University and the University of Chicago indicates that eBay Sniping is more common than most people think.

The study by Professors Patrick Bajari and Ali Hortacscu, found that about 32% of all eBay bids are submitted after 97% of the auction’s duration has passed. The winning bids are made even later in the auction. Bajari and Hortascu report that the average winning bid is made “after 98.3% of the auction time as elapsed (within the last 73 minutes of a 3-day auction), and 25% of the winning bids arrive after 99.8% of the auction time elapsed (the last 8-minutes of a 3-day auction).

So according to this research, about a quarter of all eBay auctions are won by sniping. The corollary here is that if you are not sniping on eBay, you can expect to be out-sniped about 25% of the time.

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Professor Bajari of Stanford and Professor Hortacscu of the University of Chicago analyzed the bidding characteristics of mint and proof sets of U.S. coins that occurred on eBay during the period of 28 Sept - 2 Oct 1998. The study, entitled “The Winner’s Curse, Reserve Prices and Endogenous Entry: Empirical Insights From eBay Auctions” was published in February 2002.

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