> It's driving me crazy trying to understand the rationale driving the behavior when “sniping” is pretty much always better for the buyer.
Bidding the maximum you are willing to pay early is better for the buyer in pretty much all cases. The only real benefit of sniping is that you don't spend time with potential liability hanging out.
> Any insights here? Is there a good reason for this behavior
From your description of the kinds of items -- high-price commodities with high volumes trading on eBay -- one possibility is that its people who are also selling the same products supporting the prices by making sure that there aren't auctions for the same goods open at very low prices for long (in the unlikely event that they somehow do end up winning some of the auctions because the auction slipped through everyone else's radar given the large number of similar items, they can just turn around and sell the items.)
Bidding the maximum you are willing to pay early is better for the buyer in pretty much all cases. The only real benefit of sniping is that you don't spend time with potential liability hanging out.
> Any insights here? Is there a good reason for this behavior
From your description of the kinds of items -- high-price commodities with high volumes trading on eBay -- one possibility is that its people who are also selling the same products supporting the prices by making sure that there aren't auctions for the same goods open at very low prices for long (in the unlikely event that they somehow do end up winning some of the auctions because the auction slipped through everyone else's radar given the large number of similar items, they can just turn around and sell the items.)