I have heard it a thousand times that the best way to get a bargain is to wait until the last minute to bid on an item. I can see a lot of merit in doing that and have seen good reasons to do that. I use a completely different process. I like to visit my favorite searches and look for the newest listings and I want to be the first to bid on an item. Lets say I am looking at a coin I would gladly give 20.00 for and it is listed with starting bid price of .99 ---- I bid with my maximum bid of 20.00 and am high bidder at the .99 cents (ebay only uses as much of your bid as necessary to win the item up to your maximum bid.) Now a bit later another bidder comes along and bids maximum bid of 5.00 - he will get a notice that he is outbid and I am now the winner at 5.00. This bidder may bid another time say 6 or 7 dollars. I of course am still high bidder. Often a bidder like this is trying to get a bargain only and will go to easier picking. Say a bidder comes by and is serious and he bids 20.00 - he still loses because the first bidder is winner in a tie bid. Now you say that might be a good way to get an item at a fair price, but will I ever get a bargain that way.... I am a seller and I often put items on sale with a starting bid of a penny or .99 and the only reason for that is to try and iniate active bidding. I see that six days into the auction I have a dozen watchers but no bidders. The first thing that comes to my mind is that someone is going to bid a penny at the last minute and I will have to sell my item at a loss. I, like most people, don't like to lose money so I go and revise my item ( I can do that because there is no bids and that is legal) and change my starting price to what I really want the item to sell for. It is amazing how many of the watchers will go away. Now had someone bid the first day of auction, that person would have the opportunity to get a bargain. I would have my item sold at .01 or .99 and I would have to honor that. There may or may not be any other bidders during the course of the auction and thus you get a bargain. You may have bid the 20.00 Maximum as we talked earlier and at last minute several people could bid and unless they bid over 20, you have won. If noone bid you have it for your first bid. From a sellers position, it is good to see active bidding in my store so if I end up selling cheap to someone who opened bidding up early, I am ok with that as I have received some value from the activity in my store..... as a seller, I am rarely happy if someone would win for a penny at the last minute--there is no value in that unless I jack up my shipping and handling fees to make a profit in handling. The best deals I have ever gotten on ebay is when both seller and buyer get a fair shake.