I'm always against too high starting bids. This due to several reasons.
1. Too high starting bids means that either the seller is out to make much cash out of peoples desperation, play on people not being aware of the actual worth of the items or simply being completely unaware of what the items are actually worth. In all three cases I find it annoying.
2. Too high starting bids often, for some reason or another, get some bids and then the circus has landed. If one item goes for an insane amount of money, shortly thereafter many others have suddenly rasied their starting bids.
3. Too high starting bids makes me feel angst against the seller. Yes. How dumb doesn't that sound. I get upset. Thinking, oh, he or she must be evil. Pure evil. =)
4. And so on...
Anyways... items tends to get a ficitious value on online auction sites like eBay very quickly thanks to some few people. I tend to never support that fictious value, going for the real value. And those few times that I've sold something where the bidding has gone insane and someone buys something from for what I consider too much I have even sometimes pointed that out... (still haven't had anyone not paying, though). It has even happened that I have contacted people having put a really really insane bid on something, pointing them towards another site, person or whatever, where they can get this very item for, let's say, 1/4 of the price, and also in the process realising that the very "RARENESS" if the item bidded on was entirely fictious.
I mean. Often its about being unaware. Or simply being lazy, not bothering about looking on several places for a particular item. Or sometimes simply not knowing where to look.
Sometimes the item is really rare. But in most cases, escpecially on eBay, I think not. Even some dust could sell off for big money, just being claimed RARE and STILL SHRINKWRAPPED... even being "directly from under Madonnas dinner table".
Oh well.
