Having been an ebay user focused on pre 1930 baseball since the mid 90's I find this post interesting and curious both. I am not sure you are aware but there was a time where all ebay did was auction. By year 2000 many collectors were now auctioning on ebay which drastically impacted smaller auction houses, putting most or at least many smaller auction houses out of business. In some cases the smaller auction houses ran their auctions on ebay as thats where the eyes were. At a card show every other word out of dealers and collectors was "ebay this or that". Out of nowhere ebay pivoted to the buy it now format and successfully killed off most of their pre war baseball auctions. Over the the next few years new small auction houses sprung up not using ebay. At the time I regularly called trying to reach someone of stature at ebay (which was possible 20 years plus ago) and their answer was they were having a lot of issues with auctions including shill bidding and misrepresentation of product, so they decided being and auction house for pricey pre war baseball or other collectibles was difficult for them to manage. Also I was pitched that the same dealers or collectors could now use buy it now which was cleaner and had less issues. At first it seemed to work but over time the buy it now format became the ebay museum.
As a footnote to this I dont think ebay is interested in becoming more involved in auctions (unless someone has heard different), other than how GMC or others currently do it. PWCC and its issues along with complaints, time consuming human resources, and bidding issues are not what they want. I would enjoy a high end auction format on a monthly basis with ebay and think its a good idea. Without some sort of change in philosophy or large $ promises I think ebay would just say feel free to auction under the current rules. Another interesting note is ebay has instituted seller limits. I was told in part due to sellers putting 100's of items at very high prices that dont sell as well as offering items they dont have and try to procure once an item sells.
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