eBay auction vs Buy It Now: what changes at the first bid

Work out which of eBay's three listing formats you're looking at

Every listing on eBay is one of three things: an auction, a fixed price listing with Buy It Now, or an auction that also carries a Buy It Now price. Almost everything confusing that happens to a buyer happens on that third one.

Two details sit underneath everything else on this page.

• An auction runs on automatic bidding. eBay's automatic bidding page puts it plainly: you enter the maximum amount you would like to pay, and "we'll bid in increments on your behalf to keep you in the lead but only up to your limit." Your maximum decides what you pay, and the moment you enter it doesn't change that, which is why sniping is a timing tactic and not a pricing one.
• A fixed price listing has no deadline. eBay's page on selling with Buy It Now says fixed price listings default to Good 'Til Canceled duration, which means the item "will be relisted on eBay every month until it sells or until you end it." There's no closing moment to be present for, so a fixed price listing needs a completely different kind of attention.

On increments, eBay says only that they "are smaller when the bid price is low and larger in higher price brackets." The dollar-by-dollar increment tables you'll find online are community-reported. They trace back to third-party sniping tools, and eBay doesn't publish them.

Some Buy It Now listings also let you negotiate instead of paying the listed price. That's a separate mechanic with its own clock: how Best Offer works.

Why did Buy It Now disappear when someone bid?

The seller didn't remove the button and nothing glitched. Somebody placed a bid, and eBay documents the whole behavior in one sentence:

When someone bids, the Buy It Now option usually disappears; however, in the case of reserve price listings, the Buy It Now option remains until the reserve price is met. In some categories, the Buy It Now option may continue to be available after the first bid for a limited time.

That's verbatim from eBay's page on selling with Buy It Now, a page eBay files under Selling instead of Buying. The rule that decides whether you can still hit that button is written for the person on the other side of it.

Three separate rules are packed into that sentence.

• "usually disappears" is the default on a plain auction carrying a Buy It Now price. The first bid takes the option off the table for everyone, including the person who bid.
• "in the case of reserve price listings, the Buy It Now option remains until the reserve price is met" is the exception that changes the whole picture. On a reserve listing, Buy It Now survives the first bid and keeps going while the bidding sits under a number nobody can see.
• "In some categories, the Buy It Now option may continue to be available after the first bid for a limited time" is eBay declining to be specific. It doesn't name the categories or say how long that window lasts. We're not going to guess at either, and anything you read that does name them is guessing too.

So on an auction with a Buy It Now price, that number is an option with an expiry you don't control. Any other bidder can end it for you, at any hour, without meaning to. If it's a price you'd happily pay, that's a decision to make now and not one to sleep on.

How much higher Buy It Now sits than the auction price

At least 30% higher, in most categories. eBay's Buy It Now selling page states it in one line: "In most categories, the Buy It Now price must be at least 30% higher than the auction price."

Three things follow, and only the first is obvious.

• The gap is a floor eBay sets, not a message from the seller. A Buy It Now price sitting 30% above the auction price is the smallest gap eBay allows. It isn't evidence of greed or generosity.
• eBay's sentence says "the auction price" and that page never defines which number it means. Read it as the floor and no further. It doesn't tell you the ratio holds at every moment of a live auction.
• A Buy It Now price on an auction can come down late. eBay says a seller can lower it "for fixed-price Buy It Now listings and for auction listings with no more than 12 hours left and no bids." A quiet auction in its final half day is where a seller has room to move.

The comparison that decides whether to take a Buy It Now price isn't on that listing at all. It's between that price and every other listing of the same item. You can run that comparison here, free and without an account.

Here's our part in that, and it's a narrow one. Our deal score compares a listing against the asking prices of similar active listings from the same search, and it needs at least five comparables before it labels anything. We have no sold-price data, so the label answers "is this cheap compared with what is listed right now" and never "is this cheap compared with what people paid." That distinction is the whole of judging an eBay price, and it applies to every free price check, ours included.

A big watcher count isn't a price check either. It tells you the listing has an audience, which is a different claim: what watcher counts really tell you.

Can you see an eBay seller's reserve price?

No. Two of eBay's own pages say so, one from each side of the transaction.

The buyer page on how reserve prices work says: "Unless they state their reserve price in the listing, you won't know what it is until you either meet it or bid above it." The seller page on adding a reserve price says the same thing from the other direction: "bidders will see that you have a reserve price in place and whether it has been met, but not the reserve price itself."

A reserve isn't a secret you can work out. It's a number you can only test by bidding. Three things about it sit on eBay's pages and are worth knowing before you bid:

• A reserve listing is a seller who paid extra. eBay describes the reserve as an optional upgrade for auction-style listings "with a fee that is charged at the time of listing," and says the fee isn't refunded if the highest bid comes in under the reserve. Somebody spent money to protect a number.
• The seller can lower the reserve while the auction runs. eBay lists two different conditions on its seller page: lowering a reserve needs no bidder to have met it and at least 12 hours left on the listing, while removing one needs no bids at all and at least 12 hours left. Vehicle categories on eBay Motors are the stated exception, where reserves can be lowered inside the last 12 hours.
• Lowering a reserve can change the maximum bid you entered. eBay's seller page says: "If you lower the reserve price below the high bidder's maximum bid, we'll lower the high bidder's maximum bid to $1.00 below the new reserve price." eBay adds that it then contacts bidders and asks them to bid again to reconfirm their interest. It's the one place in an eBay auction where a number you typed gets edited because of somebody else's decision.

What "reserve not met" means when you're the high bidder

It means you wouldn't get the item if the auction ended right now, even with your bid on top. eBay's wording: "If you bid below the reserve price, you'll see a 'Reserve not met' message. This means that even if you're the highest bidder at the end of the auction, you won't win the item."

Four consequences for how you bid.

• Leading a reserve auction and being in front are two different things. The bid list ranks you against the other bidders. The reserve ranks you against the seller, and that's the ranking that decides whether you get the item.
• The only way to find the reserve is to cross it, and every attempt is a commitment. eBay's automatic bidding page says bidding "is a contractual obligation," and the grounds for taking a bid back are narrow: which bidding mistakes you can undo and which you cannot, including the category where retraction isn't available at all.
• Timing tactics do nothing to a reserve. An unmet reserve is unmet whether your bid lands on Tuesday or with two seconds left, which is one of the cases where sniping is pointless.
• If the listing also carries a Buy It Now price, the reserve is what keeps it alive. On a reserve listing, Buy It Now is the only number you can both see and actually buy at.

Why did you get a Second Chance Offer after losing an auction?

Because the seller still wants to sell, and eBay gives them a way back to a bidder who lost. eBay's page on Second Chance Offers puts it this way: "A Second Chance Offer is when a seller offers you the item you were bidding on, even though you weren't the winner. This could be because they found more stock, or their reserve price wasn't met, but they still want to sell the item."

The mechanics, all from that page.

• The price is your own last bid. "If you receive a Second Chance Offer, you'll be able to buy the item at the amount you offered in your last bid."
• The clock is set by the seller. "You'll have either 1, 3, 5, or 7 days to accept the offer, depending on how long the seller has chosen."
• Ignoring it is a valid answer. eBay says an offer you don't respond to expires on its own, and you can opt out of Second Chance Offers in your eBay communications preferences.

There's also a tell for a fake one, and it's specific because it comes from eBay and not from a blog. eBay says legitimate Second Chance Offers always appear in your eBay Messages and in the Bids/Offers section of My eBay, and that eBay will never send a Second Chance Offer email with the subject line "Message from eBay Member." The page tells you to forward an email like that to spoof@ebay.com. The same page states the wider rule: "We don't allow offers to buy or sell items off our site. When this happens, it poses a risk of fraud and buyers and sellers aren't covered by our protection programs if something goes wrong." What eBay's Money Back Guarantee covers, and the one move that gives it up, is the long version of that sentence.

What a Second Chance Offer doesn't do is price the item for you. Your last bid was a number you chose inside an auction that didn't clear, sometimes against a reserve you never saw. Price it again against what the item is listed at today.

The practical version is short. On an auction the thing that costs you is the clock, so pick your maximum while nothing is at stake and then leave it alone. On a fixed price listing the thing that costs you is a price that moves, or a listing that sells while you're still thinking, so the job is checking in and not waiting for a deadline. Both go on a watchlist with the same click, and that's where the similarity ends.