[drcy]

One thing to remember is there are non-paying winners, so if a card is re-listed it can because the original winner (unrelated to the seller) didn't pay. Sellers often complain about winners who don't pay.

If you think someone is shilling his own auctions, don't bid in their auctions.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I would assume most eBay sellers don't shill their auctions because, 1) Most people are honest and ethical and 2) Shilling is illegal. I think the bad sellers, including sellers of bad items, are finite. The proverbial bad apples are usually the few. Also, eBay allows seller to sell outright and completely forgo the bidding process. There can be trickery and inflated prices in straight sales, but can be no shill bidding where there is no bidding. For the record, I think most buyers are also honest and ethical.

An obvious response is to identify honest sellers and buy from them, and keep your eyes open when bidding with unfamiliar sellers. My concern as a buyer was mostly with authenticity and getting the actual item, and reliability there could be deduced from their auction photos and descriptions and their selling history. Also, many sellers have a good word of mouth reputation. Ask around who are favorite sellers.

I will add that there was a time that snipe bidding was considered by many old timers to be unethical and cheating-- meaning, bidders complaining the technique out other bidders who had bid in the traditional way. So I don't think bidders can always claim the moral high ground (especially when they support known bad sellers by bidding in their auctions). And, in fact, I think eBayers moving from auctions to sales was often a reaction to snipe bidding, with snipe bidding a way to upend the traditional bidding process in order to suppress the final prices. However, as some sellers do shill and many bidders legitimately worry about being shilled, I'm not claiming the issue as black and white or one sided. Just that snipe bidding caused a lot of the very issues that bidders now complain about, including the lack of auctions on eBay and sellers ending auctions early. Whether ethical or not, when a nervous auctioneer sees few to no bids on an expensive item more than halfway through an auction, he may entertain ending the auction to sell to a reasonable offer. As he's been burned before, he may not count on invisible snipe bids being placed and will go strictly by what he sees-- a lack of bids. In the traditional auction format, before invisible snipe bids and when it was abnormal to only bid in the last half second, he could see throughout the auction that there was tangible bidders interest in the item. In short, I firmly believe the plethora of auctions ended early is a result of snipe bidding and find it ironic when snipers complain about the practice (along with the dearth of eBay auctions). Bidders found a new fangled computer program to get steals or otherwise suppress prices in auctions, and sellers, including honest sellers and and sellers who don't shill, don't want to sell at steal or suppressed prices, so moved to different ways to sell. It's known as action and reaction. And, remember (my paragraph is so long I have to refer to the beginning), it was bidders not the sellers who originally complained that sniping was cheating. They considered it unfair to fellow bidders.