Posted By:
Al CrisafulliWhat bugs me far more than sellers who end auctions early is sellers who shut down auctions because they're not comfortable with the bidding prices.
A few months ago there was a seller who had a lot of very nice cards he had purchased at Mastro. He listed them all on Ebay as one lot. It was one of those auctions that we've all seen, where we saw it and said "I am going to win that lot, no matter what it costs." I prepared to set an extremely high snipe.
With about two days left in the auction, the bidding was still very low - in the low hundreds for a lot that was probably worth $2,500. I started thinking maybe I was going to get a steal, but was prepared to go far higher than the cards were worth.
All of a sudden, the auction disappeared.
I emailed the seller about it, he flat-out told me that he ended the auction because the bidding was low, and he was scared he was going to lose money on the auction. So he pulled the auction and decided he was going to send the cards to PSA.
That made me NUTS. My opinion - if you list the card on Ebay, you're supposed to sell the card, one way or the other. You can't list something and then pull it because the bidding isn't working in your favor - I certainly never see sellers pulling their listings because the bidding is too high.
To make matters worse, I responded to him and asked what he was hoping to get for the cards. His response was "I have $2,500 in them, and I was hoping to get at least $2,800". So I told him point blank that I would give him $3,000 for them right then and there.
Two days went by without hearing from him, so I emailed him again. He responded by saying "The cards are already at PSA. Sorry." I never heard from the guy again.
To me, that's way worse than someone ending an auction early.
-Al