This is why it is generally not a good idea to bid big increments (or your actual "most I will pay") when going for high-ticket items...
That's very good advice. The retracted high bid on the Dino might be just a genuine mistake/changed mind but it does look a bit suspicious.
...I can't say I spent much time searching, but I did check the "usual sources" so that I would have some justification in making the following joke... "Hey, what do you expect? This is (after all) the cheapest GT on the market!" Seriously though, I will say that if the car is more-or-less rust free, and the sellers "take" is actually well south of the "ask". All the various oddities are actually good for a buyer, because they reduce the car's appeal to a fair slice of the market. I'm certainly no expert on Dino correctness, but myself, I don't see anything that would not be straightforward to correct in the course of a rolling restoration... -- Alex
Not a mistake, but not the elaborate conspiracy you envisioned either, I think. The dollar amounts would have been too low for a Dino anyway. Looking at the bid history, I can only see one thing: An experienced bidder outsmarting the system and (probably) picking up a Dino at a good price. This was not a No Reserve auction, even though it looked that way for a while. It was a low reserve ($ 80,000) auction. The bid history shows quite clearly what happened: At first, there were the usual low bids, well below the reserve. Then, an experienced bidder (500 feed-backs), apparently in Germany, threw in a bid of $90,001.The eBay system then displayed only the amount needed over the reserve: Just over $80K, and the sign "Reserve not met" disappeared. That is how it stood when Uro called our attention to the auction. The tactic of placing a high bid just to find out where the reserve is, and then withdrawing it, claiming it was "a mistake", is well known. Not popular with ebay or with the sellers, but not unheard of. It could have been tactics by this bidder, but he could also just have been surprised at the low reserve. The bidder now knew where the reserve was set, and the next day he withdrew his bid, and immediately replaced it with a $80,001 bid. Apparently, he thought about it some more, realized that he was the only bidder at this level, and withdrew that bid too the following day. A careful man, this bidder! Finally, he put in yet another, lower bid of an unknown amount, perhaps $70K. Since that bid was below the reserve, the eBay system displayed only a bid of $100 above the highest competing bid. Apparently, that was only $40K, since the Current Bid showed $40,100. That was how it remained until the seller decided to end the auction early. No mystery, and no conspiracy, in other words. My guess is that the German bidder contacted the seller directly and offered to buy the car for a bit over the reserve - if he agreed to end the auction early. Even if he paid as much as $90K or $95K, it would have been a bargain for him. It corresponds to only 67,000 to 70,000 Euros. In Europe, you do not even get a basket case Dino for that amount, I would think - much less a complete, running and very restorable car like this one. And it was a Euro Dino. As the auction reporters like to say: It was well bought.
This car is now for sale by a dealer in Monaco for 115,000 Euros (= $154,000)! I am not able to copy the link, for some reason, but you can find it at www.mobile.de Select Ferrari under Marke, then model 246 under Modell, and you will find it. The same exact photos, etc. Amazing, isn´t it?
