[jluetjen]

An important point is to be sure to list the car's condition fairly if you're listing on ebay (or anywhere else for that matter). From a sales perspective it's always better to pleasently surprise your potential buyer with the condition rather then have them show up and be let down with what they see.

The trick with ebay is to get a couple of people bidding. The competitive nature of the process will take over from there. I see a lot of auctions where people try to bend the process to their benefit, with the result that all they do is scare off bidders. A few tricks that I've found to work based on personal eBay selling experience (as well as a few master's level "Competitive Decision Making (aka: Gaming)" courses).

1) Do Cross list the item. So put it on ebay and then list it in Pelican and other sites with links to the ebay listing. If people contact you from the Pelican listing, tell them to place a bid! (see below) The objective is to generate traffic on the auction listing.

2) Don't allow people to convice you to make a deal outside ebay. I know that this is contrary to conventional wisdom. But by doing this you just short circuit the competitive bidding process which is what you want to drive the price up. If you leave yourself the out of "Ending the auction early because it's listed locally", you'll scare off bidders. Basically you'll just be leaving money on the table.

3) Don't use a reserve unless you absolutely have to. Until a reserve has cleared, it scares off bidders because so many people list auctions with unreasonable reserves. Why bother bidding (a legal commitment BTW) if the seller isn't serious???

4) Do set a reasonable starting price. In order to avoid using a reserve, set the starting price to your "walk away" price. If people don't want to pay that, then they won't bid and there's no deal. If you're "walk away" price is unclear, try starting the bidding at 70%0-80% of what you think that the car is worth. The objective is to get people to place a bid because they think that they can get a deal. Once 2 or more people are bidding against each other, the red mist takes over you and wind up with $33K 911T's of dubious provinance.

Finally...
Do be fair. People can smell a creep from a mile way!