[shaunsteig]

Looking for a little help here to see what experience others may have had when receiving a Second Chance offer from EBay. I was the underbidder on a fairly expensive card, then received an e-mail from EBay stating that the high bidder retracted and that the seller is offering me to purchase it at my max bid price. I'm keeping the auction ID anonymous, in case the seller or high bidders are Net54 members and cause I don't particularly want to advertise the card's cost that I'm spending.

Obviously, my chief concern is whether this was a shill bid. The high bidder has a feedback of 80, 100% positive, no prior bid rectractions (past 6 months), and his/her bid activity with the seller is 14%. The seller is someone whom I've purchased from in the past, which was a smooth transaction, and has a 100% positive feedback covering >500 evals. Those data points seem to me that this probably wasn't a shill bid, but there are more expert EBay-ers out there on this board. Another option is that the high bidder simply changed his/her mind, but that also gives me pause.

I do think it's a fair price for the card -- no great bargain but obviously it was a price that I was willing to pay going into the auction close. I guess I'm just wigged out a little by the high bidder retracting and this going through the Second Chance method of purchasing. Would love to hear others' thoughts.

Thanks for the help,
--S