Non bidder eBay winners

Though its harder now with a little one around, I often spend time looking at interesting items on eBay, and make sure I watch them, especially if they are local.  Occasionally some very interesting items have not had any bids for what seemed like a very reasonable starting price.   So several times now I have contacted sellers after the auction that are local and made them an offer about 5% less than their starting price (to account for their eBay and PayPal fees).  Usually most sellers are interested, and once we agree, I make arrangements to pick up the item from where they live.  This works well for the seller as it means no hassle and cash payments for their items, and for me I get a great item at a great price.

The two lenses that this worked out very well for are a rare Nikkor  105mm f1.8 (see previous post) and an ultra wide Sigma 12-24mm full frame lens.  For both I ended up paying about 25% less than what I thought their true used market value was, so a great deal all round.