r/hibid

Generally, I don't participate in auctions unless they are online-only. But recently, I had my eye on this beauty and soon realized that it was an absentee bidding auction. So, I thought, "Let's give it a shot," and placed my maximum bid (which was not a small amount but less than the retail price).

I was winning on HiBid, and the next day, I received an email from the auction house saying that I had won the watch at my maximum bid. I was happy, but also curious to know whether it was actually a genuine live auction happening at their end..

Hi everyone — disclosure up front: I’m the developer of LotLens.

I built it specifically for HiBid buyers because the displayed bid can be very different from the final amount after the buyer’s premium, tax, and shipping.

LotLens adds an estimated true cost directly to HiBid lot pages. It can also work backward from your total budget to calculate a maximum bid, open matching eBay sold listings, estimate resale profit, and keep lots from different auctions in one watchlist.

It’s free to use with optional Pro features, and it’s read-only—it never places bids or changes your HiBid account.

I’d especially appreciate honest feedback about auction pages where the premium or price isn’t detected correctly.

Chrome extension:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/lotlens-%E2%80%94-true-cost-comps/dpgcddpffcogaodnoildpgdbjfabmdkn

Built something useful for managing Hibid lots. opening a handful of closed beta spots

The part I hate about Hibid isn't the bidding. It's the looking.

My routine was basically: open hibid, search "waltham", scroll. Search "gruen", scroll. Search "favre leuba", scroll. About 40 of those. Most mornings nothing new turned up, but I couldn't know that without checking all of them.

The thing that finally got me was realising hibid has no "recently added" sort. So every search shows you everything, every time. You're re-reading the same 200 lots you already rejected yesterday, hunting for the 3 that are new. And they're not at the top, they're just somewhere in the middle. After about a week of that I started skipping keywords, which sort of defeats the point of having them.

So I built a thing that checks for me.

It runs every morning, searches all my keywords on hibid and ctbids, and shows me only what wasn't there yesterday. That's the whole idea. Most days it's a short list. Some days it's empty, which is genuinely useful information I was previously spending 20 minutes to obtain.

Bits that came out of using it rather than planning it:

I can permanently block an auctioneer. One seller was 36 of the first 100 results for "watch". I have 81 blocked now and my results are un-recognizable.

Exclude words per keyword, because searching "watch" and getting watch straps forever is its own kind of hell

Canadian listings get filtered out automatically. I got tired of finding something good and then noticing the CAD

Hide pickup-only lots, since I'm not driving to Ohio

It doesn't bid and it never touches your Hibid account. It just finds stuff. You still click through and bid there like normal. Prices it shows are from whenever it last looked, so check before you commit to anything.

Anyway, it's running and I've got a few spare accounts. If you want one, Send me chat request. I create the login, but first thing you do is hit the Password button and change it, so I'm not sitting on your password.

Fair warning that it's early and something will probably break. That's kind of what I want out of this — tell me what's annoying or confusing and I'll fix it. There will be a guide to explain you how to use the app.

update:
I’ve now stopped accepting new users for my beta version.

Thank you to everyone who showed interest in my dashboard. I received several messages requesting access to the beta, which clearly shows the need for an application like this. I now have enough users for testing, so I’ve temporarily stopped accepting new users due to compute constraints. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be working on a more refined version based on user feedback and suggestions. As requested by Canadian users, I’m also making changes to the dashboard to better suit their needs. Comment or send me a chat request to stay updated about the public version when it becomes available.