After watching eBay for over a year for one of these in good condition at a reasonable price, I finally lucked out.
I took a new approach to bidding on this one. My old approach was the way eBay recommends, which is to determine the most you’re willing to pay, then bid that amount, and let their automatic bidding handle the rest. But that method favors sellers and eBay, not buyers (It jacks up the price as bidders fight all week long.). This time, I determined early on that I was willing to pay no more than about $70. But I didn’t bid on it until five seconds before the auction ended. I also didn’t add it to my Watch List. Auctions that have more bids and people watching tend to get more views, and potentially more bids, and I didn’t want to encourage that. The bidding gradually reached $28 over the week, and after I won, I could see that two others placed bids in the last eight seconds, but at $34.00 and $36.99, they were too low to beat my $72.37 max bid, and they didn’t have enough time to bid again, so I won it for $37.99. …