Legal issues in the hobby

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Posted By: Bob Casmer

Joann,

I've got another question for you related to both Ebay and contract performance. What would be your recourse, if any, in the following case where you were the auction winner. Someone listed a series of auctions on Ebay and while they were ongoing, negotiated with various individuals to sell their entire lot of cards, including the ones he had listed for auction. You also communicated with the seller, via email, where he attempts to get you to also bid on the entire lot of his cards, all while the auctions are still running. When you decline to bid on his entire lot off Ebay, he tells you he's probably going to pull the auctions and sell the entire batch of cards off Ebay, as one lot, so don't bother bidding on the lots. Meanwhile, you had already bid on several of his auctions before any of these online conversations/emails occurred. Surprisingly, the various auctions end and you end up the high bidder on several of them. For whatever reason, the seller never ended the auctions. You assume he never followed through with selling the entire lot offline and contact him about payment for the items. He emails back in a very angry manner and tells you he sold everything offline as one lot, just like he said he was going to do. He further says he tried to go to Ebay and cancel the auctions but, THEY must have someone screwed up because they never cancelled them. He also claimed that he went out of town right after he attempted to cancel the auctions so that he never saw they were not cancelled. While the dollar amount of the cards in question was not extremely high, about $1,000, they did involve cards that you had been looking for over some time to complete sets off and in a couple cases, you had never seen a couple of these cards offered anywhere, shows, auctions or Ebay, in several years. Thus, though not considered 1 of 1 items, there were nonetheless, extremely difficult to obtain from elsewhere, in your experience.

Ebay claims that every bid is a legal, binding contract so does a seller in this case have an obligation to complete the sale to the high bidders who entered into the auction contracts or, does the seller have the ability to negate an Ebay auction by communicating to the bidders that they aren't going to complete the auction but, then fail to properly cancel it. Of course when questioned about the items, the seller claimed they were already sold and gone so he wouldn't send them. He also quit responding to emails about the situation. I'ld welcome your thoughts on this one. Thanks.
Bob