[Deertick]

I you want an item, bid on it! Planning to bid at the last second does not constitute a bid. If you do not place a bid, you have no horse in the race. The seller is free to do whatever he wishes with the item (with certain exclusions previously mentioned). If that means accepting an emailed offer, so be it.

Now if you HAVE bid on it, the seller has no idea what your proxy bid is. He (and the buyer) is mitigating the risk as others have stated. The buyer has taken the initiative to find out the price point that is acceptable to the seller. This may be significantly less than what YOU were willing to pay. The only way around it is to contact the seller yourself with an offer.

BTW, this was much more prevalent and accepted back in the day
when "Reserve" auctions were more common. I would receive 5-10 emails per auction asking what the reserve was. Some sellers would list the reserve in the description, in effect telling you "what it would take".

As a caveat, any time I end an auction (to sell), or ask someone to end an auction, I insist that it goes through the ebay checkout process. There are too many scams to risk it. Besides, eBay used to send out "bait offers" and suspend you if you offered to sell offline. Not sure they still do it, but.....