Oh well, someone got a great deal, if the seller doesn't pull any games.
And craigd makes an interesting point here. It isn't a done deal until they are delivered to the buyer. As soon as the seller realizes that shipping alone will exceed the amount of the winning bid, he may decide he isn't going to take the loss.
Last Summer, I was watching some old brass armillary sphere type sundials, because I wanted a nice one for my garden. I don't know why, but I've always thought they're cool. There are a lot of very small armillaries on Ebay, along with a lot of cheap Chinese junk. But I was very pleased to win the auction on a very nice ornate antique example that was around 24" in diameter, for a bit over $150.00 plus shipping. No one had bid on it for a couple days, and it had an unusual auction ending time of around 3:00AM. The arrow (gnomon) was bent, but it was otherwise in nice condition, and I knew I could easily straighten the brass arrow. I had expected it to sell for several times that amount.
I paid and waited for tracking info on the shipment. I never heard anything, and contacted the seller several times. After a couple weeks, I contacted Ebay to report the apparent non-shipment and lack of communications. After another week or so, the seller finally emailed me to inform me that this was his first Ebay sale, and he had no idea that his armillary sundial would sell so cheap. Neither did I, but that's always a risk in a no-reserve auction. He claimed that he didn't know he could have put a reserve or minimum starting bid on it. He said he had been hoping to get at least $750-1000 out of it, and had refunded my money and would not be shipping it. He also immediately quit being an Ebay seller. At least I got my money back.
