I have been spending quite a bit of time on eBay lately.  And while I can still say that I am NOT an eBay fan these days I was able to find a couple of really good deals on geocoins as well as a couple of study aids for my PMP adventure.

I hate getting caught up in a bidding war on eBay and what I find typically happens is that as soon as there is a bid on an item, or as soon as you outbid someone on an item you end up in a bidding war and the price of the item keeps increasing above what you really want to pay.  And now that you have a “vested interest” you don’t want to be the loser.

Gixen has helped me solve this problem… When I see an item that I would like to bid on I can logon to the Gixen site and place my maximum willing to pay bid.   Since it isn’t recorded on eBay there are no emails telling me I was outbid and that I really should bid again, I don’t get emails about similar items, etc…  A large part of the emotion involved in an auction is removed.

In the past few days I’ve won 6 auctions in the last 6 seconds and in most cases it was for far less than I was willing to pay.  I am convinced that had I been caught up in a bidding war I would have paid much more.

Gixen is free but does have a “mirror” site that you can pay for. (Six bucks a year.) There are also a couple of additional functionality things you get but certainly don’t necessarily need.

If you’re wondering if a FREE snipe site works I encourage you to take a peek at gixen.com.  You can also check out my original posting on Gixen – HERE…