The pink Suisse Army knife was a great little stocking stuffer, and the baseball went under the tree for my son. But I actually liked the egg cooker, because I love poached eggs, and I’m never able to get them right, and I used it a lot. Now, aside from the iPad case, not one of those items is something I would have actively searched for if I hadn’t seen them on Deal Dash. For low-priced or less desirable items: Sorry, but these are the ones you’re more likely to win.So if you see two people battling over something, and the item has reached a higher price point (look at the box on the left hand screen that tells you how much that item has gone for over the last few days), it’s a good time to enter your Bid Buddy bids. Two people are left in the game, both are using Bid Buddy, and one person’s bids run out. I’ve watched a lot of auctions, and this is how most are won. Once the bidding war is down to two people, jump in. For high-priced items: after the auction has hit $5, start watching.If the auction happens to end early and someone walks away with a 27-cent Keurig, no worries, you’ve only spent one bid. So when bidding on a high-priced item, let the auction run for a while after placing your first bid. Don’t expect to get an iPad for $3.50! These are the wins that DealDash advertises to entice you, but really hot items rarely go for pennies. At that point, the auction is closed to new bidders, which narrows the playing field a bit. Why? Because DealDash has a good “no jumpers” rule, which means someone isn’t allowed to jump into an auction after the price has hit $5. Place one bid on each item early in the auction, before the price hits $5.00.Begin by choosing two or three items you’d like to bid on.When you join, just buy one bid pack (this way, you’re guaranteed your money back if you don’t win.).But there is the hidden cost of lost time and that weird, jittery feeling you get from gambling. Everything ships free, so there are no weird hidden shipping and handling charges.The auction is too unpredictable, and your chances of winning are so low that you’re likely to use up all your bids without winning anything. This was a good lesson learned for me: don’t try to win items that retail for over $500. I considered myself relatively lucky, as I’d spent 250 bids, but I’d watched other bidders spend well over a thousand. The bids ran out, and some other guy who got into the auction in the final hour won the camera for $249. For some reason, I got it in my head that I had a chance at taking home the $1500 camera, so I entered all of my bids, 250 to be precise, in Bid Buddy for the camera. This is what happened to me with my second bid pack. If you get greedy or obsessive, you’re going to lose money.

It’s easy to win low-priced items, very difficult to win high-end items like fancy cameras, Breville coffee makers, and anything by Apple.Before you know it, it’s time for dinner, and you’re wondering where the time went. For some reason, it’s addictive to watch that auction clock run down, to look for new auctions, to check the winners’ list to see how much items have gone for.

I spent way more time on Deal Dash than I anticipated. You can fritter away quite a bit of it before your first bid pack runs out. Only your first bid pack is fully refundable. Deal Dash does actually refund your first bid pack if you don’t win anything, so one could argue it is risk-free if you only buy one bid pack.

I didn’t count on the site being so addictive. Minutes later, I’d dropped $36 on my “first bid pack.” Since Deal Dash offers a money back guarantee, I figured there was no risk involved. One morning, while doing internet stuff before coffee (never a good idea), I clicked through a friend’s link on facebook and followed the Yellow Brick Road to Deal Dash. Can you really get $50 Gift Cards to Sephora, Walmart and Amazon for $2? That’s the claim that penny auction site Deal Dash makes.

Deal dash