Steve,
A sensible bidder can absolutely be stolen from. In fact that's exactly what has been happening. It doesn't matter what you're willing to pay for something. If you are willing to pay $3,500 for an item in an auction and you wind up paying that exact amount for it, you're saying you should be happy, right? Well, what if the next highest legitimate bid was $1,000. That means you should have gotten the item for the next bid over $1,000. We'll say $1,100. Are you still happy that you had to pay an extra $2,400? Will you be happy when you try to sell your item and find out that you can't seem to get more than $1,000 for the item you paid $3,500 for? Surely, if you paid $3,500, that means at least one other bidder was willing to pay somewhere close to that amount, right? No, you just had $2,400 stolen from you. STOLEN. S-T-O-L-E-N.
It's not ebay where you can put in a snipe at the last minute. On ebay, I've often won items for 10% of what my snipe was. Other times, I've won them very close to what my max was. Either way, I'm happy. I think that's the kind of example you were trying to make, but it simply doesn't apply to these auction houses. It just doesn't.
I think part of the problem is that most people are generally good and it's hard to imagine that there are so many shady people in a hobby that is also filled with a lot nice people who you wind up becoming good friends with. There are many people that I've met over the years in this hobby that I would remain friends with regardless of whether or not either of us collected anything. That's one of the great things about this board.
But people who steal from you are not your friends.
-Ryan
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