I'm very experienced buying and selling on ebay. My recommendation is to use a snipe program (esnipe.com is my favorite). Bid your maximum. esnipe will place your bid whenever you say (default is 6 seconds prior to the end). I don't like to go any tighter. Biding your maximum with a snipe service allows you to be calm and sensible and not get caught up in the frenzy of bidding at the last second. As far as throwing the bank at it, if that's what you are willing to pay, do it as a snipe. There are people out there who enjoy pushing bidders up. It's like they don't know what their maximum is, but they push you to your max, and figure if you were willing to pay that much, it must be a good deal for them to beat you by a few cents. Or they just push for fun to see how much they can add to your bid. If your bid isn't there till the last few seconds, they can't push you. Snipes services also cover the case where you forgot to bid, or the auction ends when you are sleeping or away from your computer. I place all of my important bids that way.