Sniping. (Read: Gleefully watching third-party software win an online auction in the last three seconds.)

Let me give some background on the sniping situation. For AP Stats, I need the textbook "A Practice of Statistics" 4th/AP edition. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong. I'm a big proponent of buying used textbooks. It kills a little piece of me inside to buy a brand new book for a lot more when there are tons of slightly worn books out on the market. They just need a little love, some tape on the binding, and they're good to go. Some books that I've ordered in the past were in such good condition that I didn't realize they were used. Anyway, so this particular stats book does not have very good used options available online. Most of the used books I found were priced somewhere in the $100s....I wasn't very happy. Then, the other night, my dad and I ventured back into the land of used books. This time, we hit something on Ebay. It was going for half the price of the previously seen used books, but there was a catch: there were already two bids, and I can only imagine the amount of people watching it (it really was a steal). So we went to EZsniper. EZsniper is pretty sweet. You put in the auction code for the item you're trying to get, a max bid amount, and the software will go in at the last minute of the auction for the kill, ripping the book away from other hopeful buyers. Let's just say it appealed to the competitive part of me.

That was a few days ago. The auction ended a few minutes ago. I was eagerly watching the price of the book during the last ten minutes, but it stayed constant until the very last minute. Then it started skyrocketing. It kept climbing, and I got more and more anxious as it neared our max bid amount. With literally only three seconds left of the auction, the max bid clocked in at 74.71, a mere 29 cents below our max bid. I waited out those three seconds with bated breath. The bidding ceased. The auction was won. I think I was probably a little more excited about it than I should have been. Oh well. This may seem a tad bit melodramatic, but it was exciting. My dad and I were both gleefully exclaiming about it. It was a little sad that winning a textbook in an auction made us that happy. Auctions used to freak me out because I thought there was no way to win them. Moral of the story: if you find a steal on a book, but there is no "buy now" option, do not despair. Find an online auction sniper, wait, and cross your fingers. Thankfully, all of my book buying is now officially completed for the year. The next textbooks I buy will be for college...(cue freak out).

Happy book-buying,
Hannah