Dave,

You were one of the first people I bought anything from on Ebay. I never had a problem with your auctions before. In fact I posted above in your defense.

I'm not sure now which is more offensive, that you use a shill or that you don't see what is wrong with that.

First and foremost using a shill (and calling it a protect bid doesn't change that it is just a shill bid) is wrong because it is against the rules of E-bay. Now I'm not saying that E-bay's rules are in and of themselves a moral compass, however since bidders expect that you will follow the rules it is wrong for you to break the rules.

There is another thread going on about bid retractions. I assume that as a seller you disapprove of people manipulating an auction to keep a price down. Of course as a seller you have no problem with manipulating a bid to drive a price up.

I don't want to see anybody take a loss on a chip, so the solution is to use a reserve or set the minimum at the lowest amount you are willing to take. Or don't sell at auction, sell by classified ad and you can set your price at exactly the price you want.

Of course your position that anyone who doesn't like it doesn't have to bid on your auctions is ridiculous. Of course we