How Do You Use The "Watch" Function

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I also do both although like Ageka, I use the Watch feature mostly for research on a particular date and mintmark or series. It's very useful in this manner, more exacting than using ebay's Advanced Search on ended auctions since I can watch the bidding patterns as they progress. When I'm very active as a buyer, I'll use up all 30 of my Watch quota. I also wish ebay would permit more.

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What?! You can only have 30 in the watch listings? I guess the most I have ever had in the watch list was like 20, or so.

I use watch to see what certain things go for on ebay. Yes, so I don't over pay and maximize my knowledge on getting the best deal possible. I also watch key key dates just to see how much they go for.

Hey snowman, what's your success rate on the 99c thing? I've done similar things, and managed to get a few, but not many.

My watch limit is 100, and I keep it pretty close to the limit all the time, just like I always fill up almost all the disk space on my computer. I hardly ever bid on a coin when I first see it, I put it on the watch list. Then I go back to review the coin, zoom up the pictures (easy to do in opera), and make some judgement on what I should bid. Also I check my collection to see if I already have a nice example, and to assess what it will add to the collection. Will it really enhance my collection or will it just be more of the same stuff? Is the condition as good or better than coins I have? Will it even detract? Sometimes less is more, as you know. Then I place a strong bid and wait for the end of the auction. I never snipe coins; just not my style and it doesn't spread any goodwill among the small group of bidders which bid on the same stuff I do. I always see pretty much the same group. Plus I like to give the good dealers some exposure and some validation with my early bids.

If there are no bids on an item (and the starting bid is right), I'll place a minimum bid on it just to get it on my watch page. Every once in a while I get lucky and "accidently" get a steal. I suppose I use the watch function about half and half as far as sniping or market watching goes.

I use the watch feature to gain the final price so I can enter it my spreadsheet to get statistical data MIN,AVRG,MAX. Once I get at least 10 final prices for an item I'm ready to start bidding. If I lose the bid that price also goes in the spreadsheet. Example I currently have 29 prices entered for a 1996 PCGS MS69 silver eagle lowest was 116.49, average price 132.97 the highest was 180.38.

I use my watch list for sniping purposes. When the coin exceeds my price, it becomes a research watch. I usually wait to place bids until the last 20 seconds or so. Sometimes I'll bid earlier, just to see where I stand.

I use it to snipe and record final price realized. Almost all completed auctions that I'm watching realized a much higher price than I was willing to pay. On rare occasion, the price is much lower. I pay special attention to these to determine if the coin was defective and I hadn't noticed, or the seller set himself/herself up for failure with the listing. Most were closed out at a bad time (I won't divulge efforts of my research ). I now watch these "time slots" more closely.

I love the thrill of sniping in at the last second. Sometimes I hit, sometimes I miss, but the thrill of the kill makes it all worthwhile.

As a rule I never keep more than 5 items in my watch list, so some get nuked if I find something more interesting to stay under the bar.