I got sniped!

I recently decided I wanted and/or needed an attractive brooch.  (Probably 60 percent want and 40 percent need...okay, maybe 70/30.)  So I was checking out the E-Bay to see what the goods were and I found one I really liked.  It was antique silver with a plethora of filigreed petals, one slightly bent (to add character, no doubt).  Best of all, there were no bids on it yet.  Nobody else had noticed my precious, precious brooch.

The day the auction was set to end, I entered a modest maximum bid, and a few hours later I was still the high bidder.  There were only maybe four hours left, so I began to think of it as mine. ...Obviously I am an E-Bay fool.

Confident in my purchase, I got distracted by a movie with Matt (because Zorro is so cool).  All of a sudden I remembered the auction, and that it had less than two minutes to go.  I was shocked to see that I had been outbid by like seven other people!  They all knew about the BEST brooch on the internet!  I was flustered and upped my price, but in the last five seconds it was taken from me.  Yeah, and by somebody who entered a dollar amount with 99 cents attached.  I keep asking myself why they would do that, it makes it so easy to lose by a penny what strategy am I missing why couldn't they lose to ME?

So today I'm a little bitter, bewildered, and brooch-less.