I did "lose" the first fourteen of these, all the ones closing on Friday night and on Saturday, however tonight I ended up winning 8 of 9 auctions, half of which for much less than my max, half at my max (with only one other bidder involved, who obviously had a price point in mind just a bit less than mine, as had he "probed" he would have found that he would have beat me by throwing in another quarter!).
It will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes. The remaining five auctions close tomorrow night, and are for a "rarer" set of cards. I'm "winning" all five at the moment, but they're all either at my max or just under it (each with 3-4 bids in ... the same guy gave up within 2¢ of my max on one!). Again (and especially due to these being right up to my max), I don't expect to end up winning any of these, but you never know ... I didn't think I'd have any from the ones tongiht. As it is, I have 12 packs coming form each of two sets, which will make a nice part of Daughter #1's Xmas! Of course, it would be really nice if the guy "combines shipping", as a substantial chunk of what I owe for these right now is his $1.50 (per 3-pack) shipping charge.
I wonder if anybody has done any quatifying research on the use patterns of eBay? I mean, in this case (busy Friday and Saturday nights, dead Sunday night) could be easily explained by folks getting ready for Monday ... but I've seen "dead nights" on Fridays, and various mid-week days as well. Needless to say, if one was selling one would want to have a handle on this info ... as in the case with these 28 auctions, the seller was getting on average twice as much for the same items on Friday night as he was getting on Sunday. Of course, I suspect that these patterns vary product category to product category ... as one would think that the folks who are looking for Pokemon cards aren't the same folks bidding on winches or blouses ... but I could be wrong.