And that is a fair point, Steve. But if you "really want" a particular item there is no harm in making your offer.
And I know about the frustration on both sides: 1)Losing what I thought was a great deal and 2) having to sell a $50 card for $.99 because I was SURE there'd be a bidding war! (Turns out it was my bad. I had only the title and pic correct, the description and category was from a pair of jeans i had listed previously. Bad Turbo Lister! BAD!)

Chris- It's not the ABs , although that was a rough one having asked a couple favors from friends to try for more than one. That also came right after winning an item at an excellent price that became " sold on friday and we were too busy to take the auction down".

I do think it's wrong in general.

And Jim - That's why I don't do it. I couldn't say I'd never do it, but doing something I thought was fundamentally wrong would have a price I'd have to pay privately.

I don't think I'd list a $50 card at .99 there's just so much that could go wrong. I've had to revise turbo lister listings, it's certainly worth what we pay for it.

Steve B

Ending Ebay Listings Early
 

I believe it is okay to end an auction early and accept an offer IF there are no bids on the item. I have ended auctions early on a few occasions, but never when there are active bids. I've also had the situation where someone emails me and offers me a considerable amount over the winning bid because they missed the auction. Of course, I would never comply with a request like that, but I'm sure it has happened.

eBay auctions
 

I consider eBay auctions to be no different than any other auction house listings. I wouldn't ask to have an item end early as a bidder, nor would I end an item early as a seller.

I've had several auctions "disappear" on eBay and at this point only search for items ending in the next 24 hours to avoid disappointment.

Thanks to all for each one's generous input. I am relatively new to Net54 and posted the topic as a way of finding others who were also frustrated. I have always felt that an auction should run its full course; otherwise it is not an auction, but a way of taking liberties with the system. Thanks again.

I had to revive this thread. There was a sports memorabilia piece that was listed on eBay last night. I was the first to bid on it and then this morning "POOF", it was gone.

I was thinking about making an offer on it, but I said it has only been on eBay for about an hour, so I thought to myself, I'll bid on it and the seller will know that at least one other bidder has interest once he starts to get offers to sell off-line. Then this morning, it's gone.

I don't think eBay should allow a seller to end an item early if there is a bid already placed on it.

Also, for the seller, isn't an auction the absolute best measure for market value? You can't argue that ending an auction early, with bids already placed, will maximize your take.

This really irritates me.:mad:

I agree
 

+1

If the item is listed as an AUCTION and it has a bid, I agree that it shouldn't be allowed to be ended early. The caveat is that things could be legitimately lost or damaged, but that has to be VERY infrequent.

I now always ask the seller to end early on something I really want. I make sure to mention that I am interested in the item and hope that if the seller doesn't want to end now but later changes his mind he will let me know. Worst they can do is say no.

This thread also points out the usefulness of placeholder bids to signal the seller that there is interest in the item. If I really want something and I don't ask for an early ending I make sure to open it with a bid and set a snipe for the end of the auction because when I am selling a card on Ebay and I have no bidders on the item I don't think twice about accepting an offer. If there are bids already and I want to take the offer, to paraphrase Bugs Bunny I'm likely to do it but I'll probably hate myself in the morning.

Yeah and to end it after only listing it for a couple of hours with a bid already placed is just plain stupid!

I don't think we know that. I think you need to ping the seller and ask him how much he sold the item for. This happened to be me before, and the offer that the seller took was reasonable and in the thousands of dollars.

I think ebay's policy is that sellers definitely cannot do off-ebay deals, which happens a lot, and probably in this case. So if ebay ever tightened up on this policy, the case that happened here would probably be significantly reduced (although a lot of sellers would be extremely angry). However, you cannot remove the option for sellers to end items early on ebay because there are many legitimate reasons why this may happen. For example, they may have lost or misplaced the item, or if they have a real store front, they could have sold that item in the store before it ended on ebay. In addition, auction values on ebay do not necessarily maximize value. For example, if the seller found a significant item and didn't realize it, it would be better for him to pull the item from ebay and instead go with one of the major auction houses where he'd see a wider audience (e.g., one of the Peck / Snyder cards found a few months ago on ebay).

Anyway, the point, I guess, is these days, no matter if there is a bid on the item or not, if I really want to item and want to prevent an offline deal on ebay, I always message the seller either with an offer or a message that I am very interested in the seller, so please let the auction go to completion. Or if they are taking offers, I want to be a part of it, so that I can also put my offer in if others are doing so. I only do this w/ cards that are rare and don't come around often. No point doing this w/ common T206's or Goudey's. When you do this, you also reduce the chance that you will win the card for an absolute "steal" since you are basically telling the seller that he has something valuable, and he will start doing more research in it, etc, and may even pull the card, raise the reserve, etc. It is what it is, however.

I agree with you that if a seller has a storefront and lists some items in his store on eBay, that the item may no longer be available to a bidder, but do that as a "Buy It Now", don't list it as a straight auction with an opening bid of $50.00 and then pull it after 2-3 hours.

I did message the seller and he told me that his brother saw his listing and asked if he could have the helmet (not sure if he had to pay for it) and the sellers quote to me was "family comes first". What a pile of horse....

Ah, yea, that's a load of *#%#, and the same as in this thread (Link), which had a bunch of E122 cards pasted into a scrapbook that the seller said he pulled b/c his brother in law wanted the Ruth card. That scrapbook then miraculously appeared in a B&L auction, which I won, taking only the Ruth card (which was still there and not taken by the brother in law), and selling the rest of the book.

Yeah a bunch of crap. I rarely ask a seller to end an item early because I feel that as a seller, if I tell him I am willing to go to, let's say $1000.00 on an item, then why not let the auction run it's course and see if someone is willing to go to $1100 or more?

I just think that a buyer enters into an agreement to purchase an item once they place a bid, doesn't a seller also enter such an agreement once they list the item?

Once I told a seller, "please don't end the auction early, I GUARANTEE you that I will out-bid anybody for the item". He emails me back and tells me don't worry, I won't. Then he ends the item with less than 12 hours to go in the auction and I had placed several competitive bids already. I just don't get that mentality.:confused:

Let the seller know
 

I too have been burned by items I want disappearing before the auction ends. So if there's an item I really want ... I now contact the seller and let him know that I will be making a last minute bid. I also ask him to not end the auction without at least giving me a chance to win the item.

Frequently, that encourages sellers to let the auction run its course ... but I've also had a couple sellers offer to end their auction early and sell the item to me at a buy-it-now price.

Cheers,
Patrick

New eBay policies to go into effect
 

"Ending Auction-style listings early. Ending an Auction-style listing once it has a bid leads to disappointed shoppers who may be less inclined to bid on auctions the next time around. Starting October 1, a fee will be charged for ending an Auction-style listing early."

Fee Schmee.....I don't know of anyone who wants to sell their $300 item for $50.

PS - if buyers would bid on auctions like normal instead of waiting until the last 10 seconds to place a bid, maybe sellers wouldn't get cold feet when they see their valuable item selling for pennies on the dollar.

The tradeoff for lower prices is that the seller gets their money quicker. If they wanted full value for any item, they would consign to an auction house and wait it out. I believe that many people sell on ebay for convenience and quick turnaround of cash.

The auctions seem to be going away a bit with only established sellers or newbies holding them. In the case of the newbie, I would guess the majority do not reach full value on the item. In the case of the established seller, their name and reputation brings back buyers and the items probably reach full value.

The middle of the road seller/collector is putting their items up as BIN or consigning to an auction house.

I can't remember the last time I ended a true AUCTION early. I do have most of my cards listed on ebay, on my website and some here, so obviously I have to end an ebay listing if the card sells elsewhere.

Ending an AUCTION early is bad for business.

How is that going to prevent ending an auction early? They won't have to pay a seller's fee for taking it off line and selling it to someone off of eBay, so they are saving that fee. 6 of one, half dozen of the other......this won't deter sellers from ending auctions early.

It's a catch 22. Ending auctions early drives bidders away, and the lower prices due to less bidders causes sellers to end item early. Bottom line, it drives small sellers away from Ebay.

Yep. Ebay's goal seems to be to turn everyone into large storefront, BIN sellers - another Amazon.com