Sneak attack

doubledragon

A couple of months ago, I am involved in an Ebay auction that is scheduled to last 9 days. The auction already has 5 different bidders. There is no best offer option. I'm sweating it out hidden away in the bushes as usual, waiting for the final seconds. It is the 4th day of the auction, when all of a sudden it just ends. I send the seller a message asking what happened to the auction. He says someone sent him a message making an offer, and he decided to take it and end the auction, even though there were 5 people who had already placed bids on the card. I think to myself, "a sneak attack", Has anyone ever seen this happen before? The seller says to heck with the people who have already placed bids on the card, I'm taking this secret offer and shutting it down.

DBesse27

That’s against ebay’s rules. Seller was not smart to admit that in writing.

mtcards

I have had it happen multiple times. I look at it two different ways

First, waiting until the last minute to bid means you sometimes lose. It happens

Second, most likely, it was sold off of ebay. I dislike ebay, but it is the only option, but if someone offers to purchase something from me off of ebay and I can get a price I want and not have to pay ebay fees, then I am all for it. Ebay screws people daily, it actually feels good to get one back on them

Dpeck100

It used to happen a lot.

Someone on here said that EBAY started charging sellers fees based on where the bid was. Not sure if this is true but if so this probably has helped curtail some of it.

bounce

Happens a few times a week to me, especially on stuff that seems like it's "on the move up".

doubledragon

I have to admit, it was pretty slick of who ever the buyer was to use this maneuver to get the card. He got the card and got away, without having to wait the full 9 days.

doubledragon

I was under the impression that if bids were already placed by multiple bidders, then the auction had to go the distance of the full 9 days. I didn't know buyers could secretly make offers in the middle of the auction and sneak away with the card, since bids were already placed. I guess the game has gotten dirty.

JoeBanzai

@doubledragon said:
I was under the impression that if bids were already placed by multiple bidders, then the auction had to go the distance of the full 9 days. I didn't know buyers could secretly make offers in the middle of the auction and sneak away with the card, since bids were already placed. I guess the game has gotten dirty.

I remember bidding on a super rare pin-back button a while back. Same thing happened.

Someone contacted the seller and offered a big number, seller went for it.

I always felt on an item like this, it was stupid to sell it off ebay, that pin would have gotten a lot of attention from collectors.

Seller saved some fees though.

Bidders are allowed to retract bids, so it's hard to complain when a seller takes a good offer, kind of evens the field.

pab1969

It happens more often than you know. As a seller, once I have an opening bid I won't end the auction. Sometimes when the auction ends I end up making less than what was offered. But it is the principle that matters.

lawnmowerman

It's all for the best. If you had won it, your wife would have whooped your butt again.

DBesse27

@pab1969 said:
It happens more often than you know. As a seller, once I have an opening bid I won't end the auction. Sometimes when the auction ends I end up making less than what was offered. But it is the principle that matters.

I agree with all of this!

LarkinCollector

@pab1969 said:
It happens more often than you know. As a seller, once I have an opening bid I won't end the auction. Sometimes when the auction ends I end up making less than what was offered. But it is the principle that matters.

This is the way I run mine too. I'm not sure what I would do if I were offered way more than the max that I was expecting for it though. Probably why I was mostly sticking to BINs other than items I just wanted gone, so my principles wouldn't be challenged

pab1969

@LarkinCollector said:

@pab1969 said:
It happens more often than you know. As a seller, once I have an opening bid I won't end the auction. Sometimes when the auction ends I end up making less than what was offered. But it is the principle that matters.

This is the way I run mine too. I'm not sure what I would do if I were offered way more than the max that I was expecting for it though. Probably why I was mostly sticking to BINs other than items I just wanted gone, so my principles wouldn't be challenged

Sometimes I have no idea what an item is worth or what someone is willing to pay for it. I sell many different items from cards to books to whatever I can make an extra dollar on. On a few auctions I had turned down decent offers and got way more at closing (and more than I expected) than if I took the offer.

doubledragon

@lawnmowerman said:
It's all for the best. If you had won it, your wife would have whooped your butt again.

Believe me, every time I enter an auction, I know that if I win, I still have to get the card past the goalie.😉

lawnmowerman

@doubledragon said:

@lawnmowerman said:
It's all for the best. If you had won it, your wife would have whooped your butt again.

Believe me, every time I enter an auction, I know that if I win, I still have to get the card past the goalie.😉

If she's anything like the Tampa Bay Lightning goalie, that should not be a problem. What a disappointing playoff series that was.

brendanb438

Back when The Walking Dead was first becoming huge I was snagging up collections of the comics left and right with offers to folks to kill their auctions and outright sell to me. Some sellers just wanted to move the items quickly and gladly took offers up front from me while some others would just let the auctions ride. Made some good money off of doing this.

Heck was a few times with Magic the Gathering cards that I lucked into some of my biggest deals ever by messaging sellers to see what they had and what they wanted to outright sell to me. If you understand MTG cards and know what a dual land was from Revised I once had someone sell me close to 120 of them in NM condition for a price of around $12 per card because they wanted to move them right now. At the time I could turn right around and list them on eBay at an average of about $55 per card so yup that was a hell of a score.

Been on eBay since 97, they have made a ton off me in fees both as a buyer and as a seller and over the last decade been screwed enough times as a seller that I don't care about eBay making every penny they can off me.

doubledragon

@brendanb438 said:
Back when The Walking Dead was first becoming huge I was snagging up collections of the comics left and right with offers to folks to kill their auctions and outright sell to me. Some sellers just wanted to move the items quickly and gladly took offers up front from me while some others would just let the auctions ride. Made some good money off of doing this.

Heck was a few times with Magic the Gathering cards that I lucked into some of my biggest deals ever by messaging sellers to see what they had and what they wanted to outright sell to me. If you understand MTG cards and know what a dual land was from Revised I once had someone sell me close to 120 of them in NM condition for a price of around $12 per card because they wanted to move them right now. At the time I could turn right around and list them on eBay at an average of about $55 per card so yup that was a hell of a score.

Been on eBay since 97, they have made a ton off me in fees both as a buyer and as a seller and over the last decade been screwed enough times as a seller that I don't care about eBay making every penny they can off me.

Oh believe me, Ebay will never have to worry about money. They got plenty of it.😉