You know, maybe the seller is not experienced with chips. (A lot of people live very fulfilling lives and have never thought of chip collecting.) Maybe he is afraid to put them in an envelope (even a padded envelope) for fear of them breaking, so he plans to put them into box to be sent priority mail. Maybe he has other reasons to send stuff via priority mail. Maybe he plans to insure them.

Your letter is nice and polite, by the way.

Maybe he is busy and picked the number out of the air. Maybe he thinks that if they went for a high price, he'd be stuck with the insurance, and so they would be sent for more than $4.00. But that is OK with him as he doesn't have the time to fine tune it that much.

We all love it when an inexperienced seller lets things go for too little, so why excoriate him for charging "too much" for postage and not being an experienced enough chip packager?

Maybe he wants an extra dollar or two when he realizes (eventually) that it takes him (a) a good hour or so to type up, correct, edit, research, etc., his auction description and then take a picture or scan and then edit the picture to get it to be the right size, contrast, etc, and put all of that onto eBay; (b) 10 minutes or so to bill the buyer for the sale if there are bids; (c) an hour or so to hunt up a package at a grocery store and then wrap it and trudge to the post office and wait in line to get it insured, etc; and (d) a half hour or so to deposit the check, email the seller that it was sent, give feedback, answer complaints, email non-payers and fill out non-payment eBay forms, and do his bookkeeping.

As others said, calculate the $4.00 into the bid.

Robt.