The person who's willing to pay the most wins. I'm 
all for that. I wouldn't bid if I wasn't. But, this 
isn't always the case.

I don't mean to pound this example into the ground, 
but the auction that I've been referring to did not 
go to the person who was willing to pay the most 
money. I know this because I was willing to bid 
much more. But it ended early, and I wasn't able to 
even get it in. So the buyer convinced the seller 
to end early. Good for him, he's got some enviable 
negotiation skills. But to put it on ebay within 2 
weeks...

Also, having a middle man bid for you contains 
inherent problems. Already on this forum people 
have mentioned complications with middle-man 
communication. They oversleep, forget, the server 
goes down, all of this is understandable. But when 
you aren't bidding for yourself, you lose a lot of 
control. So this can result in the winner not being 
the person who's willing to pay the most. 

But you are absolutely right, we are talking in 
circles. I think that's because we're talking about 
different situations. This isn't really about 
auctions per se, but the priciples behind the how's 
and why's of reselling items. The auctions just 
provide some examples of this practice.

In any case, even if we don't agree, I've enjoyed 
discussing this.  After all, that's what this 
forum's here for! ^__^

-Megan