There's a cool little program out there called Baygenie that will automatically put in a bid on one of your Ebay auctions in the last seconds. I probably would have been outbid if it weren't for it, actually.
I have won a few pipes recently on e-bay. What I do is find a pipe I like, do some research, look to see what others like it have sold for, then decide what the highest price I am willing to pay for said pipe. For instance, I won a Sav rusticated churchwarden the other day. I bid on the pipe when there was 3 days left. At that time the bidding was at 7.00, the highest I decided I would go was 30.00. So I bid 30 bucks and never looked at it again. When I bid 30.00 it raised the bid to 8.00, and every time someone would bid I would always be the highest bidder until someone went past 30.00. No one did and I won it at 27.00.
Beautiful Pipe by the way, I was looking at it, but I am waiting to get the Nordings from lonestar to see them in person to see what will fit my now 7 day Nording set.