Upon the date 09:32 PM 9/15/99 +0200, Hans B Pufal said something like: listed Or the seller thought the bidding up to that point didn't approach his possibly overinflated expectation and bailed before he had to commit to selling it at, say, $455? If he had no reserve then this could be a credible second reason (I didn't check to see if he had a reserve). I couldn't even find it in the closed or "ended auction" area. Did he or somebody completely remove all reference to the auction? Can that be done? Regards, Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/

Hans B Pufal wrote: The seller has the option of closing the auction down earlier than the posted time. I know of no way though for the seller to extend the closing time. Ebay does extend auctions 24 hours in the case of a hard outage on their part.

On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Megan wrote: Ok... you've got me curious. (swinging wildly toward being O.T.) What was there about this particular auction that might have led to a complaint which would have resulted in it being cancelled? (obviously, I did not see anything that threw up a flag) -jim --- jimw(a)computergarage.org || jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com The Computer Garage - http://www.computergarage.org Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174

At 03:46 PM 9/16/99 -0400, Megan wrote: There's a lot of misinformation going around, I figured another experienced Ebay seller might step up but, apparently that task falls to me: First, the seller in an Ebay auction can end it at any time. You just click on the link to end an auction. Second, the basic rules continue to hold. Which are: - You offer something for sale, you have the option of setting a reserve price and a minimum bid. - When your auction ends, if the highest bid was above your reserve then you _MUST_ sell the item to the highest bidder. REGARDLESS OF HOW THE AUCTION ENDED. The last bit is important, once your reserve is met, the item must be sold to the high bidder. Its in the contract. So in the case of the 2114, the seller ended the auction early and sold the 2114 to aek(a)spies.com for at least $455.01. In this case, the seller probably lost out on potential revenue. Ebay auctions in my experience follow a very consistent pattern which goes something like this: $$ + * | . | . B | ............ . I $ + .. D | .. D | . |. +---+---+---+---+ ... +---+ d0 d1 d2 d3 d4 de-1 de Days of the auction de = ending day. (Sorry for the lousy ascii graphics) Where in the first day or so the price goes up a bit from the minimum bid as all of the interested parties put in their "watch" bids. Then its flat for the duration of the auction, and then on the last day (sometimes in the last 10 minutes) there is a huge flurry of bidding and the final price emerges. Now a clever bidder can take advantage of a novice seller, by being the high bidder at the start of the "quiet period" and then after a few days offering to just "end it now" and pay the high bid. To a novice seller this looks like a good deal since there hasn't been any bidding anyway, and they can get their money that much quicker. The seller fails to realize that some people shop ebay by _only_ looking at the "Ending Today" listings and so would not even _see_ their listing until the last day. Further, the novice seller fails to realize that most people do _not_ put their highest bid in at the start because they don't want to raise the price too much. Anyway, the latter technique would work great on sellers who were both novices and had their item at a price "wildly above" their expectations. Also the high bidder can offer more than their current high bid to the seller if they close the auction but this is _really_ dangerous because the seller only has their last bid on "paper" and an unscrupulous buyer could weasel out of paying more than their high bid. If the reserve price has not been reached then the seller can end the auction and not be obligated to sell the item to anyone. --Chuck

Does look a bit curious, but thats eBay (nuts). Both buyer and seller have a fair amount of feedback history, so they may be unique people with similar names. www.vintagecomputers.com claims to be the largest privately held computer collection, opening soon. Somebody should invite buyer and seller to join this list, if they BOTH aren't already on it. ;) Here is the bid history. eBay Bid History for Xerox Star, the First Commercial GUI Computer (item #159344077) If you have questions about this item, please contact the seller at the User ID provided below. Seller assumes all responsibility for listing this item. Last bid for this item: $7,500.00 (reserve price met) Date auction ends: 09/13/99, 20:37:51 PDT Date auction started: 09/06/99, 20:37:51 PDT Seller: old.computers (old_computers(a)yahoo.com) (16) First bid at: $1,000.00 Number of bids made: 16 (may include multiple bids by same bidder) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bidding History (in order of bid amount): oldcomputers (ebay(a)vintagecomputers.com) (14) Last bid at: $7,500.00 Date of bid: 09/13/99, 20:37:29 PDT atarmiga (atari(a)wcoil.com) (2) Last bid at: $2,300.00 Date of bid: 09/13/99, 18:07:46 PDT eleestafford (lstafford(a)thestaffords.com) (15) Last bid at: $2,010.00 Date of bid: 09/13/99, 16:41:51 PDT mikegalos (mikegalos(a)msn.com) (10) Last bid at: $1,025.00 Date of bid: 09/08/99, 22:33:50 PDT

Chuck McManis wrote: My experience is similar except that I've noticed the rise time at the end of the auction is getting steeper as people wise up as to a buying strategy that seems to reduce the final price, at least on ebay. I've had people contact me after the auction saying they wanted to bid but missed the deadline. I might add that I have mostly only tried to follow the Vintage Computers catagory.

That doesn't sound like it is allowed according to eBay's rules... there has to be a compelling reason for termination, and not simply because the person has not decided to sell at auction. When a person starts an auction, they are committing to sell the item *to the highest bidder*... Someone may have a case to complain to ebay about this seller. Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+