Ending Ebay listings early

[pgellis]

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.

[t206hound]

Originally Posted by pgellis

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.

+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.

[Exhibitman]

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.

[pgellis]

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

[glchen]

Originally Posted by pgellis

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.

[pgellis]

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....

[glchen]

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.