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Old 05-19-2012, 01:23 PM
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glchen glchen is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pgellis View Post
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.

Last edited by glchen; 05-19-2012 at 01:26 PM.
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