I think it is Mr. Reynolds who has missed the point. I didn't read in the entire thread where anyone supported shill bidding. He posted a rhetorical question and received responses that he was not expecting. No one attacked him or called him names.

The point most folks made, as I read the thread, was that shill bidding exists and it will be with us for a long, long time as long as ebay allows it (in spite of what their published rules say). It's like posting speed limits on major highways that are not obeyed. It's against the rules, but it happens and the police even permit exceeding the speed limit to an extent.

All I've consistently said in my posts is that I know that shill biding exists at times, but we don't always know when a shill bid happens, so I'm happy to win an item I'm bidding on at a price that I have agreed to pay. Is there something wrong with that philosophy?

If Mr. Reynolds thinks that responses to his now deleted posts were "dumb" ... I think that it is he who missed out on a potentially constructive learning experience.

So Mr. Reynolds now chooses to hide among the lurkers by annoucing his intention to "leave the board for quite awhile" as a follow-up to deleting all of his posts in the thread. Is that a constructive or productive step to take?

Where's Gene's fork ... I'm done ... unless of course someone has a follow-up question!