All of the posts on this thread raise good points. And I want to say at the outset that I know nothing about the seller and bidder in this auction.

But, one shouldn't take everything at face value. When I look at an eBay auction, one of the first things I look at is the feedback rating of the parties (not infallible, but helpful). Especially of the bidder. Here both have a ZERO rating. This always makes me suspicious. If the bidder has a zero rating, I wonder if the bid is either (1) a crank bid, or a bid to damage the seller's auction; or (2) a shill bid.

I have no proof, but I find it mind boggling at the way the many auctions on eBay for modern, new 200 and 300-chip cased poker chip sets start off with $9.99 bids and always garner dozens of bids from zero-rated bidders, who work it up to $100 or so (not that unreasonable an amount, by the way).