Good advice, Chris 🙂 I still have a problem with the process: as soon as I place the bid I start visualizing the item in my house, and how it will make me feel, and what it will look like/sound like. Once that happens, when someone outbids me it is sort of like something has been “stolen”, and I want to get it back. Weird- like I say, it isn’t really rational.

I just got outbid again- sigh. And that was even after raising my maximum twice. I suppose I can take some solace from the fact that both times I was outbid it was by “premium” bidders with a history of buying antiques- I can pretend that means I have good taste or something 😉 Interesting fact: both of the clocks I’ve bid on so far are in Great Britain. Which means I have to be a bit careful with the conversion from pounds to Canadian dollars, especially on the shipping.

I just had another thought. Given how few clocks of the type I’m looking for are for sale on eBay, my bids/losses could be single-handedly creating a false increase in the perceived value of these kinds of clocks. Both of the clocks I bid on would have sold for about 100 pounds less if I hadn’t been involved. So the next time I bid, there will be a bunch of folks who saw the prices for previous clocks of this type go higher than expected, and they’ll jump in to further inflate the price.