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Posted By: Max Weder

Dan if I understood your post correctly, you made a reference to ending the auction early as being allowed under the ebay rules. As I read the ebay rules, it is not okay to end an auction early to sell to someone outside of ebay, other than ending the auction at the current bid price to sell to the high bidder:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html

"Offers to buy or sell listed items outside of the eBay site are not permitted. Offers of this nature are a potential fraud risk for both buyers and sellers and circumvent eBay's fees.

Some examples of offers outside of the eBay site include:

Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay

Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who became aware of the item through eBay

Ending a listing early to sell the item at a higher price to the winning bidder

Offering to sell an item to a bidder in a Reserve Not Met listing without going through Second Chance Offer

Offering to sell duplicate or additional merchandise to under-bidders without going through Second Chance Offer

Sending unsolicited (without prior permission) commercial email offers to bidders for the same or similar products that they have bid on in the past

It is acceptable for sellers to end a listing early in order to sell an item at the current bid price to the high bidder. Bidders are permitted to contact sellers with requests to end a listing early and sell at the current bid price; however, sellers are under no obligation to honor the request.

Violations of this policy may result in a range of actions, including:

Listing cancellation

Limits on account privileges

Account suspension

Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings

Loss of PowerSeller status"

The practice certainly exists and sales are routinely ended early to sell at a higher price, but ebay certainly doesn't condone it.

Max