[wptw]

It wasn't that she sees what other items he bids on. I do that too. It's the obviously disparaging remark she made about his waist size.

GPhiBLtColonel, why don't you apologize for what you said, and not for what other people said to you after you said it. Yours is a classic NON-apology: "I'm really very sorry that someone called me out on my crappy comment."

The implication of your comment was very clear: The guy's a fat nerdy dork. Or were you trying to be complimentary when you mentioned his 42 inch waist? This guy made you mad on a badge auction so you personally insulted him. It just wasn't nice, and I think you know it.

Back to topic:
ASUADPi, yes, now I understand what you're saying about ebay. They call that their proxy bidding service. But again, it's not always a collector putting in the $150 proxy bid - it could just as easily be another sister. I find that collectors usually use proxy bidding and sniping while members (especially those new to ebay) tend to do what you do - bidding it up $2 at a time and being continuously outbid. When you have a lot of bidders using the latter strategy, the final price tends to be inflated. That's why I've always argued that member on member bidding drives up prices far more than collector bidding. Collectors very rarely overpay for a given badge because they're most familiar with badge market prices (ebay and off-ebay).

I hope that explains it a bit.

wptw