...it is only an isolated incident. You must also consider what we call auction fever. There are times people decide that there is an item they MUST have and a bidding war begins.

Robert... This is not an isolated incident, rather it is a pattern within the chips section of ebay that repeats itself daily. I've noticed the phenomenon for as long as I've been tracking auctions. You do better not using reserves in low to mid-range chip auctions.

As far as the bidding war scenario, I've given you two auctions with virtually the same chip... it is not germane in this argument. A bidding war is just as likely to occur in a reserve or non-reserve auction.