Arghhh, my first bid and I screwed myself (again).

I think we've all made that mistake at some stage David, but usually by accident. To answer your question, I often place an initial fixed bid, then top up with an autobid, especially if the auction has a Buy Now as placing the first bid if it's a start = reserve auction makes the Buy Now disappear.

Hi Gary

Ah, so an auto-bid might not meet the reserve? I notice that reserve is rarely if ever used on EBay these days as sellers just start the bidding at a minimum price that would equal a reserve. I must admit I see some odd bidding at my local collectors club. An auction will start at $5 with no interest so the auctioneer drops the start bid to $2. Two people then start bidding and the item ends up selling for $7-8. Odd.

If you try and place an autobid and the reserve price is higher than your auto bid, the auto bid jumps straight to your max bid but you are not winning at this stage anyway as reserve is not met. There are several ways to set pricing by sellers.

1. Buy Now only, no bidding, only Buy Now.

2. Start price = reserve price so once first bid is placed the item is going to sell when it closes. This may or may not have a Buy Now option, but the Buy Now won't show once a bid is placed.

3. Start price plus a hidden reserve, so people can merrily bid away but until reserve is met, nothing is going to sell. Again, this may or may not have a Buy Now option. This strategy is often used to test the water to see what buyers might be prepared to bid to, or for some collectables where the seller might judge interest, then depending on bids send a fixed price offer to some or all bidders/watchers once the listing closes unsold.

Yep, I see what you say about bidders getting carried away all the time in physical auctions. Quite funny sometimes. Happens all the time on here too. Seller lists 1 item at $1 reserve but has others listed with Buy Now, and people bid higher than the buy now price on the $1 reserve listing thinking they are getting a bargain.

Kia Ora David and Welcome to TradeMe 😊

A Rookie mistake that one! - An auto bid if placed lower than a reserve will not win an auction - the reserve price must be met to win the auction.

You would not be able to place a bid or auto bid lower than the shown reserve price on an auction - this can only be done when the auction has a hidden reserve price.

Placing an initial low bid on an auction with a Buy Now removes the Buy Now so another Trader doesn't come along and purchase the auction outright.

- Cheers.

Gary, sorry your comment wasn't showing when I jumped in here - Both you and Lucy have appeared before me after my comment today - you magic people! - Cheers.

We’ve all done that or been very close to it David. It’s a rookie mistake and you generally only ever do it once!
If you have plenty of time before the auction closes, you can ask the seller to remove your bid. There’s some rules or guidelines around removing bids but off the top of my head I can’t remember the details. 
I had the exact same situation the other day. I removed the leading bid and the chap has since placed another, much lower bid. That’s ok with me as it would be a bit unfair if I was to capitalise on someone’s mistake.

Hi David, thanks for posting. Have you reached out to the seller about that mishap? They might be prepared to look at that for you and we would adjust their success fee if you were able to reach an agreement with them.

If you want to scare othet bidders who would generally go up in steps you bid high in first place (to what $ you would let it go).