Posted By:
runscott I guess the take-home message here is simple - if you see an item on ebay that you want, contact the seller and offer to buy it off-line (many will add a BIN). I would say 25% of the non-card items that I am really interested in get pulled early because of deals made by others prior to auction end.
I don't like to put bids in early, as it lets people I know who are interested in similar items know what I'm bidding on, so I waited patiently to snipe. Frustrated when the item was pulled and sold for $18.00, I emailed the seller to let them know that for future reference they would definitely have gotten substantially more than $18.00 for this item if they had let the auction run to completion. The seller said that they felt "sick" now. That's good.
But I am glad that this item went to a friend.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3251845907&category=11673&rd=1