"Private Listing- Bidders Identities Protected" On Ebay?

westernsky, thanks for the reply. This auction seemed strange based on the way "private..." was responding to my bids. I am going to take your advice and drop out.

Yeah, I never understood why there would be private listings. The only thing I can figure is that in regular bid situations, even though you can't see 'exactly' who's bidding against you, you can kind of see a particular bidder's pattern....but that's almost of no advantage to the seller as far as I can tell. Like was said above, seller is hiding something for some reason. Maybe I'll contacrt the next seller that does that, and just ask them why.....I'd be curious.

In the 'olden' days, you could see bidders IDs. You could even contact them from listing. Something I did a few times with people who beat me on items or were under-bidders, asking them if they shared the same collecting interests as me. In a couple of cases we've maintained a good correspondence and learnt a lot from each other.

But if you can see IDs you can also soon work out if someone's friends keep bidding on their items to push the prices up. Frequent bidding but few wins, or wins and no feedback suggested what's known as 'shill' bidding. To hide this people would make their listings 'Private' Ostensibly so buyers could bid without others knowing what they were buying (not unreasonable with high value items like coins).

The trouble with open IDs ebay claimed, was that people would fraudulently offer a sold item to under-bidders when they didn't actually own it. So they stopped people seeing IDs and contacting each other from listings.

Whether this really was a problem or there was another reason, I personally liked the old system. Experienced buyers could warn off n00bs from fake items and dodgy dealers, as well as socialising. Of course, I guess it was also easier to arrange off-the-bay sales too. Something ebay would not have approved of.

Here is a link to the "private listing" on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/30111213563...RK:MEBIDX:IT

When I clicked on the link to make sure that it worked, I see that the "private listing" has been removed and replaced by bidders' ID's. What the heck?javascript:insertsmilie('')

What's the difference between a private bidder and a***0 (192) or p***m (4197) that mean nothing?

The seller emailed me back and said:

"I never heard of anything like this before. Sounds to me like a glitch either with ebay or possibly with your computer. There is a possibility that the other bidding was retracted for some reason and left you the high bidder. A person could check with ebay for an explanation, if curious enough. If you happen to bid again and encounter anything like this once more please let me know. Thanks for letting me and I hope there are no more complications"

I talked to ebay and the rep said that either the seller accidently set up the sale as private or it was the mysterious glitch.

Either way the bidder ID's now show normally. ebay rep could not explain why bid history showed only one bid from me when I had made several.

I think what arianzo is asking, is what is the difference between the normal concealed identities and when it says totally "private." IMO, with the normal concealed identities, I can see bid patterns of a particular bidder, which helps me a little....very little. But when the identies come up "private" then I can't see anything.