Osborne 01 for only $5000.00 - new Scam???

Innfogra(a)aol.com wrote: On some I have, some I got to be the only bidder and never hit the reserve. The seller is responsible for deciding if he or she wishes to relist the item if no reserve is met or sell it. I did work out a deal with one seller that had listed a reserve and after three listings only saw two bids ever. I asked if she'd take a certain amount or trade and was able to get a set of like new Tektronix scope leads on trade for a 400 mb hard drive. We both made out and since it didn't hit reserve she didn't have to do a final value fee, to the best of my knowledge. Many people use it to get people's curiousity up or make a proxy bid jump though. If the start is $1 and a person feels that it's worth up to $25 for them and posts a high $25 proxy, and the reserve is $20, then auto-magically the first bid shows $20 and clears the reserve. I don't care for this at all myself. I generally post what I want to see for an item, at minimum, and then see what it goes to from there. If I get only one bid, fine. I've NEVER used a reserve pricing myself but that's not to say that I'll never find a need for it someday. I do like haggle's system of a running high bid auction or a single bid auction. The single bid auction is more like saying you have an item for a certain amount and the first one to make an offer of the minimum gets it. Sort of like posting it here or on the newsgroups, only less negotiable.