Vanishing T208 Cullivan Fireside

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Posted By: Art M.

Anyone else notice this very "brief" Ebay auction today for a nice T208 Cullivans Fireside of Thomas, Athletics?
Im betting someone reading this post is now the owner:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2770333864&category=31719&rd=1

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Posted By: prewarsports

The best thing about ebay is when things like this come up for sale. I would bet that the seller got ripped off, and it deprives everyone from the chance of owning such a rare card.

I would rather see shill bidding going on then people undercutting auctions like this. At least with shill bidding you get to place a bid!

Congratulations to whoever "won" this card; they got a great item and all they traded was your integrity since this type of shady dealing is now completely against ebay rules and they place a disclaimer atating such on the top of every e mail to seller.

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Posted By: Lee Behrens

I believe that ebay should actually have some sort of penalty system for ending auctions early, whether it is a fee or some type of negative attached to their accoount. If there is absolutely nothing wrong with the listing there needs to be a penalty. I know one of the board contributors had to relist because of no pictures came up and he relisted, relisting should wipe out the penalty or fee.

Just my thoughts

Lee

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Posted By: Rob

Ebay simply rents space on their website, they are not an exclusive sales agent. Ebay "rules" are only an attempt to protect Ebay commissions. The seller should had let the auction run, given the rarity of the card, he probably sold offline for less than what he could had received, but he is a sophisticated seller, so it's not like someone fleeced a rookie. Sounds like a case of sour grapes here.

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Posted By: TBob

Congratulations to whoever "won" this card; they got a great item and all they traded was your integrity since this type of shady dealing is now completely against ebay rules and they place a disclaimer atating such on the top of every e mail to seller.prewarsports>>>

I am not following you here. Are you saying that ebay now no longer allows sellers to end their auctions early and sell off-line to a buyer? When did this happen? I haven't heard of this and I assume this is not correct. Ebay allows bidders to bail out and retract bids and sellers to end auctions whether reserves have been met or for whatever reason if they do not wish to sell the item. I don't like it and don't end my own auctions early but I have in the past made offers to sellers when new auctions come up if there is a particular item I desperately want. In the last year I successfully bought 2 E94s, both violet, both creased, when I offered the seller a price which was above book for the card. It happens. I have been leading bidder umpteen times and have seen the auctions close early and my bid cancelled. I don't like it, but it is something we live with on ebay.

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Posted By: prewarsports

Bob, I ask sellers a lot of questions before I bid on stuff with so many fakes going around and starting about a month ago ebay started to put a big diclaimer at the top and bottom of every e mail to a seller which says that it is against ebay rules sell to end an auction early to sell to another person.

I am not niave enough to think that there is any way they can actually police this, and do not know ebays exact policy but I do know about their new disclaimer refering to a "rule" that it breaks.

I do not have a problem with asking buyers to add a buy it now. I also do not really have a huge problem with the concept of ending an auction early for reasons like errors in the discription, or just plain keeping your item. It isn't even that big of a deal when they have a starting bid of $2000 and you know that is exactly what they want for it, and there are no bids. I just have a problem with this auction in particular because the person was obviously misinformed about the value of their item and they were presumably taken advantage of.

Last week I found an 1887 Reach guide that a person was selling and he also had an N338 SF Hess Dave Orr along with the auction and he had no idea what it was. When I saw what he had I immediately e mailed him and all I said was

"you are going to get people aking you to end this auction early, please do not do it because you have a very nice item and their offers are probably low".

When the auction ended and I won it for $810 he said he had over 10 offers to end the auction and not a single one was for over $250 and since it was the first thing he ever sold on ebay he would have done it had I not e mailed him.

The point of that story is that if people knew why they were getting offers to end auctions, they probably wouldn't do it.

Ebay should just change their disclaimer and say, "If you are getting an offer to end your auction early it is probably worth more than you think and you should seriously consider why the person doesn't just want to bid if their offer is so FAIR". That might actually work.

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Posted By: Jeff S

it always strikes me as odd that some sellers so readily accept these types of offers.

Basically they are weighing (or should be weighing) the chances that a) the e-mailer is trying to get the item really cheap, or b) the e-mailer really wants it, and is the only person who'll bid high, and just really wants it right now.

Every once in a while, it's legit that somebody just really wants it now--I've paid a premium to get somebody to end an auction early so I could get a gift shipped in time. But I figure that in our arena of old cards, that's pretty rare.

The strangest thing about the whole thing seems to be that sellers will embrace the opportunity to get cash in their hand five or six days earlier than otherwise.

I often get notes from people who see my auctions that say something like, "I'll pay you $x right now by paypal," as if I'm willing to give a big discount in order to get the cash by Thursday. The frequency with which I receive such offers suggests that the strategy may work for some buyers.

Getting a cash advance on a credit card is a better deal than accepting an offer like that!

End of rant, for now

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Posted By: jay behrens

They could at least do like they do for bid retrations. On teh feedback part list the number of auctions that they have ended early.

You would think that the money grubbing whores at eBay would be hot on this problem since ending an auction early generally means lost revenue for them.

Jay