As an Ebay bargain hunter I use several tricks to find secure and grab my bargain one of the most useful tools is the 'advance search' (located just to the right of the normal search) I have several tricks I use to find bargains one is when searching for an item what I really want is to be the only person that bids on the item or just outbid someone who was about to get an item at a bargain price. To find these items in the section 'Number of bids' I put 0 min to 1 Max this gives me a list of items that have 0 bids or just one bid, if 0 bids I put my bid in and sit back if 1 bid I will put a test amount in to make sure the person is not trying to steal the item at the bare minimum

Ok here is how to bet me at my own game Take an item starting at say $0.99 you have to be the first bidder you first put the minimum bid in in this case $0.99 you then rebid the next allowable amount $1.04 what happens now is the item has 2 bids and dam I will not get to steal it of you, if you want to be extra safe stick another bid in $1.09 it will now show 3 bids I do sometime put 2 in the max but usally only on bigger priced items.

It is also worth doing this on items you are willing to pay a lot more for if you are going to put a max bid in of say $20 on an auction starting at $0.99 first put a bid in of $0.99 then the $20 bid why because if I search for items with 0-1 bids and see the item you have $20 max bid on only has 1 bid I might give it a test bid of $5-$10 to check if it is just someone is trying to grab a bargain. If this happens you end up paying more you may have got lucky and only paid $0.99 but now you pay the next price above my test bid.

I have secured lots of bargains at $0.99 that normally get stolen from me doing this was happy bidding