[Rick Lee]

I did this for a guitar in the early days of eBay, before they had BIN. I put a reserve of about $4k on it and figured it was worth about half that, but wanted to see what the market was doing. I got tons of messages from folks asking what my reserve was and trying to disguise their email addresses to get around eBay's filters and letting me know how to reach them outside of eBay. I ended up making a trade for what has since become my number one guitar and is probably worth almost $4k now. But I'll never sell it.

I have also done some deals outside of eBay when the listing said "I reserve the right to end the auction early, as item is also listed locally." That usually means it's on the local CL too.