If nothing else, this discussion has proven why you never, ever, want to use ebay as a benchmark for pricing. I thought the winning bid was pretty high given the actual market, even for a retail dealer sale, and the first thing I did was bring up the bid history because I was certain the feedback rating for the winner would be 0 or 1 meaning a bidder who was either bogus or not a serious buyer. Sadly the sale was set up to hide bidder details, but the fact that the car was relisted within days confirms the winning bid wasn't a serious one. Worse, we can assume the seller would have also made a second chance offer to the second or third highest bidders and apparently these bidders weren't that serious either.
One of the things I learned while selling cars for Ford is there are distinct price points out there. Most people can afford "cash cars", which are cars priced at $3,000-$4,000, without financing. The number of qualified buyers who can pay for a car over $4,000 without financing drops immensely while at the same time cars priced at $4,000-$11,000 are generally cars that can't get financed due to age and milage. So when you see bids on older cars that would not likely get financed, that fall between $4,000 and about $11,000 or so, they are often very suspect.
