bamajon1974 wrote:I just want to know who I am dealing with. I suspect that people know of/have dealt with porthawkesbury since his name was produced so quickly?

Doubtful.  From what I know of people like this they either live in an underground bunker somewhere and have little or no contact with the outside world.  Or they live in a luxury penthouse or mansion and spend their time trading stocks, buying and selling companies, or planning the downfall of countries and employ a sizable staff of people that do nothing but scour Ebay for shrinkwrapped RPG items.  

Just kidding....no real way to know who or why.  I've been outbid numerous times on similar items by one person.  It can be a little frustrating but I usually get a better deal in the end.  There is nothing more satisfying than picking up a sought after or rare item for a pittance and knowing that I was outbid on the same item previously by someone that paid quite a bit more than me because he or she just had to have it.  

I never really understood all that "patience is a virtue" crap until I started collecting.

bamajon1974 wrote:Does anybody know who this ebay bidder is? His hidden name is  u***t  
and he has outbid me on several shrinkwrapped 1st and 2nd ed DnD materials at the last second lately, a couple of items that I have wanted for many years to complete my collections. Apparently he always bits a rediculously large amount at the last 2 seconds of any auction to always win and is rather annoying. Any suggestions would be quite helpful. Thanks!

I sent a post about that recently.
http://www.acaeum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9916

In fact, I was surprised about the fact that this buyer bought several times the same item in a short period of time. He bought probably 3 or 4 times the DL modules DL1, DL2, DL3 and DL4, and several other of the serie. All in SW. It seemed to me strange for a collector to buy more than one time the same item in mint condition. In fact he purchased many and many other D&D items, most of them in SW, during the last months. One time, he snipped a last second a module I was searching for, and he put a very high bid in order to be sure to get it. It seems normal for a  collector to do that for a wanted item, but it's unusual to see the same buyer bidding (highly, and winning) exactly the same item less than one month later. Money seems not to be a big problem for him. But I wonder what is the future of all this SW modules ?