kn,
Here's my experience from both buying and selling on e - bay.

First it is smart to wait until the end for obvious reasons....it will go for less. Instead of a bidding war for a week what the bidders are hoping for is they get their bid in before you have the opportunity to get yours in.

I think the smart way to bid though is decide how much you are willing to pay for an item and use the "proxy bid" option. Let's say you are willing to pay $1000. tops for something. If you put that amount in proxy bid, it will keep bidding for you automatically by the set bid increments of the auction, but not go over your $1k. It will not overbid an item either, let's say the other person will only pay 900. and the bid increments are set at $25.00....it will bid $925.00 for you and stop.

OK....I've sold some of my musical equipment I no longer wanted on there. I've gotten quite a bit more for it then I would have gotten on a trade in and except for getting it shipped it's a pretty straight forward deal. Out of 4 items I have sold only 1 bidder backed out and I subsequently relisted the item and sold it anyway.

As far as buying....I bought an amp that was no longer being made and was difficult at best to be found. It was a dealer back east selling a used one. The price was right etc....however when I got it, it had a terrible low noise hum that was unacceptable to me. Fortunately I was in contact with the dealer ahead of time and asked about the return policy. They did allow me to return it and gave me full credit.

Absolutely pay by charge card if it's a dealer, so you have some leverage. With a private sale, such as mine were about the best you can do is what someone suggested and that is look at if there is feedback for the seller from previous deals or not. You can also send them an E mail or two with questions and see how fast they respond and whether or not they have a "real" e address as opposed to hotmail or yahoo. What I sold a couple of my violins for "was too good to be true" but it was and the buyers got killer deals on them. But an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
Terry

[This message has been edited by trtjazz (edited 10-31-2002).]