Buy It Now vs auction on eBay: the difference

A Buy It Now listing sells at a fixed price to the first buyer who commits to it, while an auction-style listing sells to whoever is the highest bidder when its timer ends. The lines blur a little. A Buy It Now listing can also take a Best Offer, so the final price can land below the asking price. And an auction can carry a Buy It Now price too: eBay says that option usually disappears once someone bids, and on a reserve price auction it stays until the reserve is met.

Before you buy one

• Set your top bid once, and mean it. eBay's automatic bidding lets you enter the most you'll pay, and eBay bids for you in increments up to that amount, never past it. A bid is binding, and eBay doesn't allow bids in its Trading Cards categories to be retracted. If an auction has a reserve, the highest bidder doesn't win unless the reserve is met. Pick a number you'd be happy to pay, then let it run.

• Make offers you'd be glad to see accepted. On a Buy It Now with Best Offer, the seller has 24 hours to accept or decline, so send an offer you can live with and plan for up to a day's wait.

• Price either format from sales, not asks. Look at recent sales of the exact card, its comps, and write down your top price before the listing appears or the auction ends.

• Read the shorthand. Sellers write "BIN", "Buy It Now", "OBO" (or best offer), "auction", "no reserve" and "NR". They tell you the format and whether there's room to offer before you even open the listing, so scan titles for them.

ChaseBoard alerts you to both formats. Most alerts reach you three to six minutes after a listing goes live, and most of that gap is eBay's own indexing, so a low-priced Buy It Now can sell before the alert arrives. That's why it pays to have your top price written down already. Auctions alert as they near their end at or under your price, and those auction ending alerts depend on your plan.