Academic Article showing that bid sniping does not work...
jmlanzaf
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Interesting study, for what it's worth.
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Wow! I think some people have too much time on their hands LOL! 9 page paper?
Very narrow scope on fungible products constrained by their limitation to using low value (under $50) items (due to funding?) -- good for the set up of the experiment for control of variables but little to no relevance for one-off items such as individual numismatic coins or a discovery trade token from Hungry Horse, Montana.
The intrusion of knock offs into the experiment (pirated Game Boy copies) adds a variable that may have affected other categories studied as well.
They were looking for a cost benefit....When I snipe(d), I was looking for an acquisition benefit...which means, I got the item and the others did not. When evaluated from that position, sniping is good.
Cheers, RickO
There are numerous similar studies. But, of course, it's a religious issue and no one cares about facts.
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Oh well then. Over many many years, my own experience (on ebay) is overwhelmingly that my approach of using a bid of the highest amount that I am comfortable paying, placed at the 4-seconds-to-go point of the auction, has worked very well. I have won most of them, probably 75% or so. Of those, the great majority come in at an amount below my entered maximum bid; sometimes well below. I never place a bid before the final "snipe", which I have always enter personally (I've never used a sniping service). I have missed out on only two that I very much wanted; but that's a price I'm willing to pay, given my overall success with the method. It makes the whole experience simple and brief, with no time wasted thinking about what to do next. We're not talking five and six figure items here, so it works.
Coinlearner, Ahrensdad, Nolawyer, RG, coinlieutenant, Yorkshireman, lordmarcovan, Soldi, masscrew, JimTyler, Relaxn, jclovescoins, justindan, doubleeagle07
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't no optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me. . . . . . .
The fallacy with this "study" is that no two auctions are the same. Think about how you asses an eBay auction: start price, bidders involved, pictures/description provided, title of the listing, feedback of seller, end time of auction and all of the other variables I'm not mentioning. Also, unless the items being auctioned are brand new, they're not comparable either.
The conclusion of the article is not that "sniping doesn't work":
In one auction of each pair we submitted an early bid, and in the other we submitted the same bid exactly ten seconds before its close. Our results, from a set of 70 such pairs, indicate no benefit to sniping: we found evidence of 2.54% lower prices for the sniped auctions, but we did not find this benefit to be statistically significant.
In fact, sniping results in slightly lower prices, which is a benefit in spite of what the authors state above. From my perspective, the only downside to sniping is that in a multiway (eBay style) auction, if you are the last person to enter a bid, you can potentially not win the auction even though your bid was the highest. That would be due to your bid not being at least a full increment higher than the current price at the time it was entered.
This is a completely ignorant statement. When the difference is not statistically significant, it means that there is effectively no difference as it is within the margin of error of the measurment.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Use common sense! There is no possible way that sniping can cost you money, but it can save you money. Them's the facts. I don't care about "statistical significance". As I stated, the downside of sniping is that you will very occasionally fail to secure a lot when you in fact submitted the highest bid, so that's the only risk in it.
That's not true. If I submit a nuclear snipe bid to try to win it - which people do - then you can end up with a higher bid than you would normally submit. You actually can't afford to be conservative, because you'll have no chance to counter.
If I submit the same bid as I normally would, no matter what, you are correct. But then I'm less likely to win because the first one to the winning number wins.
Of course, it's not my study, so I don't feel too much passion to defend the conclusion. There are other studies that show slightly different outcomes. None of them seems to show a significant price difference or a significant difference in the likelihood of winning with the sole exception [of studies I found] of a study that showed that if you found unpopular auctions with few bidders you tended to do better. Although, in that case, is the success due to sniping or simple lack of competition?
Nonetheless, I find it interesting. You may not. So be it. But please argue with data not conjecture. Thank you.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
P.S. Nice of you to stake out the anti-science position. Damn the data, full speed ahead!
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Actually, there are other studies that show that your likelihood of winning isn't higher UNLESS there are fewer bidders. Which could simply be the affect of the number of bidders.
There is, interestingly, a lot of literature on this going back to the early 2000s when eBay became popular.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
This just shows deficiencies of intellectuals who have limited experience in the real world with the vast possible objects to snipe as through gavel snipe.
How about the brain numbing activity of those who are spending way too much time on an auction trying to do something easily executed by a snipe program in the last second? A lot less stressful and easy. And gavel snipe does not charge.
I would think the risk would center around those who shill their auction items and just re run them until a "live one" places a high enough bid through shilling, etc..
This is a very critical distinction, in my opinion. For items where there is a pretty well established price, it's logical that sniping has no impact. A used iPhone 8 of certain specs in a given condition has a particular going/market price and nearly all auctions will end within a few percent of that amount. I would assume sniping has essentially no impact. For less common items where there are no established prices it is much easier to conclude that sniping can have an impact. Not only because of the lack of established pricing, but also due to scarcity. If I lose out an auction for a iPhone 8, there are plenty more ending within the next 24 hours.
Edit: I will add that it is a very interesting topic/discussion, very much a game theory sort of problem.
People also submit nuclear bids early in auctions. I've seen it happen many times. Just as I've seen many snipe bids of the non-nuclear variety. If you want to turn this into a debate on whether snipe bidders are likely to bid more aggressively than non-snipers, I have no interest. From the paper you cited:
In one auction of each pair we submitted an early bid, and in the other we submitted the same bid exactly ten seconds before its close.
So I believe it was reasonable to assume that that was the scenario under discussion.
And for the record, I am in no way "anti-science".
I agree.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Your words: ** I don't care about "statistical significance". **
Even if they submit the identical bid early and late, since they don't always win at their maximum bid, it is still possible that the snipe bids ended at a higher number. That, of course, is NOT what the data says. The data, however, also indicates that it didn't end at a lower number.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Yet another corollary of the old remark attributed to an unknown economist: "Well, that seems to work perfectly well in actual practice, but I wonder how well it works in theory . . . . ."
Coinlearner, Ahrensdad, Nolawyer, RG, coinlieutenant, Yorkshireman, lordmarcovan, Soldi, masscrew, JimTyler, Relaxn, jclovescoins, justindan, doubleeagle07
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't no optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me. . . . . . .
OK, let me rephrase what I assumed was obvious: I don't care about statistical significance in the context of this argument. I'm not going to rehash everything I've already written. But to summarize: Sniping (vs. making the same bid earlier) can never cost you money, but it can save you money. No statistics are required to prove that argument.
Again, that is only true relative to your max bid. You can't ever pay more than your max bid, sure. But you could make the same case about bidding early. Bidding first can never cost you money, but it could save you money.
It is a completely different situation if you are talking about the price paid rather than the max bid.
If bidding $100 on day one leads to an average purchase price of $80 and sniping at $100 leads to an average purchase price of $90 - assuming the type of bid is the ONLY difference - then sniping costs you $10.
Your point is only correct in the limited and moot context of the max bid. No one EVER pays more than their max bid, no matter when placed.
You are assuming that everyone's bid, at any time, is not influenced by what's already happened. You are assuming that everyone is always going to have the same max bid. That may not be true, including the sniper. If you calculate your snipe bid based on the price on day 6 rather than the opening bid on day 1, it may end up higher. There's a whole psychology to this.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
With just 70 data points, all that has to happen is one person competing with the early bid on one auction sees they are not the winner and bumps it one increment to account for the 2.54% difference.
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The limited number of data points is probably why the difference is insignificant. Feel free to go to scholar.google.com and read the other 1000 articles on the topic. LOL.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1255438.1255441?casa_token=MrsPfIGjRAgAAAAA:LHVKMWhyw_gFVNkOo9T-iVFbA6uipIAMx8b3L223ajZCsRNLDJ_KHY2irH9ZeXrL8yd1PqQ7wm_6
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Undergraduate/Nominated%20Senior%20Essays/2016-17/PhilipGroenwegen_Senior%20Essay.pdf://
53 page thesis paper. LOL
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
As an example...
I don't remember what message board I read the comment on, but there's at least one person out there who claims to never bid on an auction that already has bids, because shillers. If you wait to snipe the auction he's already bid on, it'll cost you more than if you made the first bid and he avoided the auction.
Just sayin'.
There's a whole psychology here. It gets discussed a bit in the 53 page thesis paper.
When you are calculating a snipe, the previous bidding action likely goes into the calculation. You might throw a $100 snipe on an auction with a $20 opening bid and no other bidders, but if the auction is already at $80 when you go to bid, you might raise your offer to $120 trying to win it.
For things with known values, it is far better to be on the right increment. I have literally raised my own bid in a face-to-face auction because I was on the wrong increment. For bullion, I will jump a live auction (if the auctioneer lets me) to my max bid out of the gate because I can make money at that number and if I try to steal it one bid lower, someone else wins at my number.
I think the whole thing is far more complex than "no one has a chance to come back on my snipe".
I've also never figured out why eBay hasn't just implemented an automatic extension when a bid comes in. If there were an automatic 2 minute extension when a bid came in in the last 2 minutes, they would eliminate sniping and be more like traditional auctions where the clock never runs out until the bidders are exhausted.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Attention everyone, please stop sniping
Okay. I don't play this card very often, but I'm going to now. I have a degree in engineering from MIT. I understand science and math really well. I also understand the coin market and eBay. In the context of coin auctions, this study is badly flawed. Statistical significance granted, discrediting this study is in no way anti-science. As sniping is discussed on this message board, the study, while interesting, is not applicable. Part of science is understanding when and how to apply results to a similar but not identical situation. It is completely pro science to state that this study does not apply. The points have been made before, but I'll summarize them.
1- This study required two identical listings. Outside of very generic coins (modern issues, primarily), no two coins are the same. Some are much closer, but there can always be a reason to prefer one over another even when they are "the same." Beyond that, there are intangibles that are far more applicable to coins than other categories. Photo quality can make "identical" coins appear different; a trinket you could get at Target is the same regardless of picture quality. Additionally, the feedback of the seller is important, and perhaps even distance (will I get it in 2 days or next week?). What about return policy? Random items almost all have eBay's generic return policy. Coins may well not. This is not an exhaustive list, but it contains numerous factors that matter. The study did account for this, but doing so is much easier with commodity items.
2- Market price. When something is readily available and identical, there is always another, which makes it easy to cap a price. Why bid $120 when something usually goes for $100, and if you don't get this one at $100, you'll get the next one? Coin quality is intangible, and if a coin is rarely available for sale, it may be worth paying more than it's "worth" so you finally get it.
3- Fixed price sales. If identical items are readily available at auction, they are likely also available at a fixed price. This automatically caps the price, because why bid more than the fixed price at which you could buy it?
Now, there is one important point here based on what you've said. Everything about sniping is predicated on the idea that you'll bid the same amount either way. If you bid $100, that has to be your absolute top bid in either scenario. If you might go higher in one situation or the other, you've changed the conditions. You can only decide one method is better--or they are the same--if everything else is held constant. If you place a nuclear snipe, of course you can end up paying more. But if you placed that nuclear bid 4 days before the auction ended, you could pay just as much.
In the coin market, the downside to sniping is that if someone else bids within an increment of your top bid before you place your bid, you lose, even if your bid is higher than theirs. That's a risk you have to take. That said, whatever high bid you choose to place, there is less time for another bidder to place that additional bid. As you said, "You actually can't afford to be conservative, because you'll have no chance to counter." The same goes for the person you beat out with your snipe. It goes both ways. If you didn't beat out that second bidder, but you sniped the maximum amount you were willing to pay, then you lost simply because someone else was willing to pay more, and that's how auctions work.
I'll give a quick example. Last year, I bought some silver bars on eBay. They were a commodity--readily available at a fixed price, available in quantity, and with a value based on a known market. Sniping didn't work well because there was no reason to bid more than the fixed price at which the bars were available--or, arguably, a bit less because the point of bidding was to save some money. Bidding late meant someone else was at that sweet spot of good deal, but not so low it's worth bidding more. That was much more like the study scenario, where the first person to bid the right amount was going to win. But that's not the same as general bidding/sniping on unique items. No, I'm not going to argue with their data--I have no reason to believe it's problematic. I will most certainly argue with their methodology, namely its applicability to the sniping that is typically discussed here.
Overall, they may get a lot less business. There are a lot of auction alternative sites, like "Get an iPad fr $50" that use this approach but they never take off.
Personally, I really dislike the approach without a fixed time, like used on Heritage and Stacks. The reason is that it makes it hard to plan my day. I'd like it more if I was retired
How does GC work with end times?
Those "Get an iPad for $50" sites aren't really auction sites. They make you pay for bids and they actually make thei money on the cost of the bids not the cost of the item.
GC also has fixed closings.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I didn't suggest that arguing counter to the study was "anti-science" but saying "damn the statistical evidence" is certainly questionable.
You are correct. Applying the methodology to anything but widgets is problematic. Of course, that does not mean that non-widgets would behave differently, just that they aren't really testable with this methodology.
It's like CAC. Is the CAC premium a premium for the sticker or a premium for a better coin? It is really hard to tease it out.
In the case of eBay, it might be better to look for a less controlled methodology and let statistics sort it out.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
There are so many logical fallacies and misdirections in this post, I'm not sure where to begin.
For the purposes of this argument, we are talking about the methodology in the cited study. Namely, the same pre-determined maximum bid is either placed early or at the last second. There is no psychology or emotion involved there. Agree or disagree?
Now consider the psychology of the other bidders in the auction. If you know anything about poker and game theory, then you know that the less your opponent knows about your intentions, the more advantageous for you. By bidding at the last possible moment, you deprive the opponent(s) of the time to react to your bid. By bidding at the last second, you also eliminate the possibility of shills probing your early bid with incremental raises.
If you want to stick to the methodology in this study, fine. Although your statement seemed more general. But your point is still moot. As I pointed out. If you bid $100 on day one and your win price is $80 and you bid THE SAME $100 on the final day and your win price is $90. And the only difference is the timing of the bid, then bidding late cost you $10. It IS POSSIBLE, contrary to your assertion, for snipe bidding to cost you money if you are looking at price paid because...
You can NOT ignore the psychology of the other bidders even if there is no psychology to your identical $100 bids. As you mention here...
Your "opponent" does not know what your max bid is if you bid on day one. Yes, you eliminate the possibility of shills probing your early bid, assuming that's even common. But you might also consider that you change the whole nature of the auction by eliminating weaker hands early. Overall activity is, according to another study, a factor in where snipers tend to snipe.
You also need to consider the increments. Let's say your "opponent" will bid no higher than $80. If you bid early and get to $80 first, he does not place another bid. On the other hand, if he places his $80 bid first, your $100 snipe forces you to pay $82 or $85 whatever the bid increment is. That is a very simple way that the snipe would cost you MORE even with identical behavior from all bidders.
None of this is an argument against the findings of the study, which are what they are.
Why don't you just admit that you either misspoke or were incorrect? First, you suggested that the statistically insignificant difference was somehow significant. When that didn't work, you suggested that there is no way you ever pay more with a snipe than an early bid, which I've also demonstrated is simply untrue.
It's okay, we still love you even if you're wrong.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I did not misspeak. You keep coming up with off the wall scenarios to try and save face. For example, if I bid my max early, I do not force out weaker hands unless someone else has already entered a bid higher than what they (the weaker hands) wanted to bid. In which case, the weaker hands were never going to be a factor in the auction anyway.
The only point of yours I agree with is that if you bid the same exact amount as someone else, it is advantageous to have done so first. That is probably why experienced snipers tend to add a small random amount to their max bid rather than use a round number.
None of that is off the wall.
Why do i have to save face? It's not even my study you are arguing with? And you just admitted that you could end up paying more with a snipe due to the increments. So, if nothing else you are wrong on that. And, frankly, the statistics speak for themselves.
But, that's okay, I don't ever expect you to admit that you were wrong...especially if it simultaneously means I was right.
The forum may judge. I am done.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
But saying "damn the statistical evidence" for something that is NOT THE SAME SITUATION isn't a question of dismissing science. Just because something is statistically significant in ITS context doesn't mean that it can be generalized to imply broad statistical significance. Using conclusions that are irrelevant or questionable in context--even if they are meaningful in their context--is bad science. That's why the details matter. It's just as important to know when the evidence is useful and when it's superfluous.
Another option: save yourself the trouble. Make friends with those who have an eye for the coin series you like, build a community of friends, trade amongst friends who probably have better coins that what you will find on Ebay anyways. Help each other find coins at shows, etc. and go out to dinner once in a while and share knowledge of where these coins are located, when they may become available ... you may find that sort of collecting journey a little more rewarding and less stressful.
A Barber Quartet is made up of Nickels, Dimes, Quarters, and Halves.
That can work, but there's no reason to simply shun a perfectly good source of material. True, it might not have every variant from every niche, but eBay has a lot of coins, and plenty of them are nice. Besides, it's not just coins. There are other hard-to-find collectibles that pop up on eBay. It may be that one or two of what I'm looking for show up a year; I'd be a fool not to check and see if I can end my hunt.
You composed the title ("bid sniping does not work"). Yet the data disclosed in the study showed that snipers saved money on average. Then the authors conclude that the savings weren't statistically significant. OK, so don't publish the damn article until you've run enough trials to achieve statistical significance! By the same token, they certainly didn't prove that sniping costs the bidder money. At worst, it's inconclusive.
I did not admit that you'll end up paying more with a snipe. You'll end up winning slightly less often, but it is impossible to construct a scenario where given the same max bids placed by the other bidders you end up paying more with a snipe than had you bid the same amount first. I dare you to try.
Your analysis of the study was an excellent and made compelling arguments that it is not relevant to the coin market in general. However, CoinJunkie did not take the approach that the study was flawed or not applicable, but rather that the statistically insignificant improvement with sniping was indeed significant. Therefore, his or her conclusion was that the study demonstrated sniping was actually beneficial. That is clearly very different.
It seems that you do not understand statistics or how trials and studies work. No matter how many trial are run, there is still a margin of error. If you make 1,000 coin flips in the rain and get 509 heads are you able to say that the 0.9% of "extra" heads is statistically insignificant? Or do you need to run more trials before publishing the damn article? Or do you say that the impact of rain on a coin flip is inconclusive? Presumably you conclude that rain has no statistically significant impact on a coin flip. More data is not going to give heads or tails a statistically significant advantage. And there is an entire field of statistics for attempting to determine statistical significance of data/repeated trials.
PS: I'm a fan of sniping and use it for most auctions.
I will admit that I did not read the entire study, just the conclusions and some other salient points found while skimming. My main issue with the study is that better data can probably be arrived at either theoretically or by designing a well thought out computer simulation than by running a relatively small number of empirical trials.
I don't have a real gut feel for how much one might save in the long run by sniping, and I imagine it may well be less than some people would guess. But any savings is better than no savings.
I am not a statistician by profession, but I believe I have a good handle on its concepts. Are you suggesting that more data does not give one a more significant result?
As an aside, before you run the experiment in the rain, you'd better have a good handle on how often heads comes up when it's not raining. The design of the coin may be such that heads comes up 50.9% of the time under normal circumstances.
But I come back to my assertion that statistics and empirical data is not the best way to approach the problem at hand. I've laid out my arguments throughout the thread and won't repeat them again here.
Cheers.
...I’m with @ricko ...when I want something, I want it...two and a half seconds left and I go nuclear...the end result is almost always the same...I win and pay. Snatching is a better word for how we do it...while Poindexter is calculating cut-bids and house-points...I win
Human beings bidding on an auction are competitive by nature. How many times have we seen someone continue to chip bid on an auction till they attain the high bid? Sniping may not save you money (especially when others are sniping, as well), but the fact that once your bid is launched the losing bidders (assuming you attain the high bid) will not have an opportunity to respond will potentially save you money and/or losing out on the item. That is why auction houses employ extended bidding. How many times have you been outbid on an item and 5 seconds after the auction closes, you wished you could have bid higher? If ebay ever implemented extended bidding, sniping would be a moot point. Till they do, sniping is always your best bet at bidding.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
I agree.
It's not a surprise to most of us that snipes on easily available items do not yield a significant price reduction.
They even admit it in the paper, on p. 14:
As stated by others, the advantage of sniping is that you avoid the shillers and irrational bidders (who want to "win"
but don't know their true max) in a situation where the item is not so generic.
In terms of economic efficiency, when you snipe in an optimal auction structure like ebay
(where the price is equal to or one increment above the second highest bid),
there is no disadvantage to using your true maximum bid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
This provides an "efficient allocation", where the person who wants it the most gets it.
Making the price depend on the second highest bid instead of on your max makes the price
somewhat independent of your max, which allows you to use your max without a disadvantage.
NO, the conclusion of the study was quite the opposite: there were NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS.
As for delaying publication until you have a statistically significant difference ASSUMES that they would eventually find one. Even if they run 1000 trials, there will still be a statistical test of significance. While the confidence interval will be more narrow, it is never zero. And, if there is no statistically significant difference, there is no statistically significant difference.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
This is true - competitiveness. But that is only one piece of the psychology. Other studies indicate that snipers shy away from active auctions, for example. That is another affect of "competition".
It is an interesting question. It is also a religious argument where no one cares about the data. People who believe in sniping (or disbelieve) will not be swayed by rational arguments or science.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
The study included coin widgets. If you want to argue that non-widgets aren't the same, that is a testable hypothesis if anyone wants to test it. But, again, you can't simply ignore the statistical evidence which is what Coinjunkie was doing.
I make no claims about the study beyond what the study showed. There are numerous other studies out there with similar conclusions. There are a few out there with different conclusions, but they aren't as well controlled. As much as you (we?) might hate the paired objects - although 90% of the coin market probably can be paired - at least it has the virtue of controlling most variables and attempting to isolate the timing of the bid as the sole variable under test.
Personally, I would argue that for a coin that isn't a widget, the snipe is likely less effective than being on the correct increment.
If you consider the nature of the "snipe" for a busy, competitive item, there's really a few ways it could play out. If it is actually an item with high interest, you can't simply snipe with a conservative price guide value and think you'll win. Someone is likely to snipe nuclear. If you choose to snipe nuclear and someone else also does, you will end up higher than you might have in an organized bidding process.
One paper I read indicated that sniping was only really effective in auctions with limited bidding. That seems right to me. If you snipe on an auction with little interest, there is likely no one sniping against you. But is that an advantage of sniping or simply an advantage of competing in an empty arena?
Nonetheless, it is an interesting question that shows no clear-cut broad-based advantage to sniping...despite what people seem to think.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
He's correct here, @CoinJunkie. In statistics, the lack of a statistically significant result is, itself, significant. What it's saying is that although the numbers are different (sniping saves you money) given the parameters of the trial, the difference is within the error band, and the result could have just as easily said sniping costs you money. This is the same reason that medical trials may say a drug is no better than a placebo even when more patients who received the drug get better. If not enough more get better, the results may be due to randomness (the patients who got the drug were slightly less sick than those who got the placebo) rather than because the drug actually worked.
My comments above notwithstanding, I still wholeheartedly disagree with @jmlanzaf's conclusions about non-widget coins, largely because it hinges on inconsistent methodology. Namely, if you bid conservatively and someone else bids nuclear, regardless of when either one's bid is placed, you will lose. Similarly, if you bid nuclear and someone else does, you will pay more, regardless of when either one's bid is placed. If your actual high bid is unchanged regardless of timing, sniping simply gives the other party less time to react if you outbid them. If you still want to argue, that's fine, though this paper does nothing to counter with any science what I have said, nor does it do anything to support your conjecture.