Am I Missing Something In This Ebay Seller's Reply To Inquiry Re Stampless Cover

I saw a listing on ebay for a stampless cover with photos of the section showing the addressee/city as well as the first page of the four page letter. Since I was curious whether it would fit into a certain collection of mine, which would depend on the name of the sender, I send an inquiry as follows:

"I am very interested in this item. Would you have scans of the other pages of this letter? If not, could you identify the sender of the letter from the signature page? Thank you."

The reply I received was as follows:

"If I send you all the photos of the letter you get what you want for nothing. This is a sale. Best wishes and thank you."

I find this puzzling, since what I may want for my collection is the actual letter itself; photos don't achieve that - they just give me more information to determine whether the letter is relevant to me.

Serious question - did I misunderstand something in this exchange or was my inquiry unreasonable?

Thank you for any enlightenment you may share.

Maybe the sale is for just the photos and not the actual letter. Gar

I will sit on the fence between the seller and Oracle. There are lot of image "harvesters" skimming through ebay who save images and information with no intention of ever bidding. It appears this seller feels burned by previous experiences. Many add watermarks and other such "security" devices to attempt to thwart free harvesting (or at least reposting). Some sellers might also choose to withhold sending additional scans until a bid was received by the information seeker - in other words "prove you are really interested by making a bid" - just saying.

I too save images of lots I have lost or have only a casual interest in. I have also sold letters in which I overlapped the pages or transcribed small portions to give a flavor and said "buy the item to read the rest". On the other side of the coin, there is little reason to withhold the letter writer's name from potential bidders - that is a part of good lot describing.

interesting take.

John Becker - thanks for an interesting perspective. Being the naïve eBayer that I am, it wouldn't occur to me to undertake some of the actions you describe. I would have assumed that, by my stating that I would be content with just the sender's name, the seller would have realized that my interest was a genuine and not a nefarious one.

In general, I don't have sympathy with the notion that a buyer should have to risk real money to find out everything he needs to know about an item to determine value. In this particular case, the starting bid was quite low, so I guess I can see why the seller might use that as a test of my interest.

But, in the end, it's his stuff and he can sell it any way he wishes. I'm just trying to figure out whether I was too demanding in this case.

I can't read the seller's mind or know of their past experiences, but I believe the seller was set against supplying the full scan for reasons of those past seller experiences, so your second request for just the name was already up against a closed mind and ignored. Too bad for them.

I would also add, that it takes time to make additional scans. Over the years I received inquiries about postcards I had listed to post scans of the message side (even when I noted they were unused!). I sensed they came mostly from the genealogy slant. Going through this scanning effort seldom ever resulted in getting a sale. They always wanted me to make all of the effort instead of asking "Can you look at the message and see if the sender/recipient has a surname of Smith, Jones, Brown, etc..." They put no skin in the game. I stopped wasting my time on these questions and used it to make additional listing which would get sales results.

Oracle, your request for more info was reasonable. Sometimes people are just jerks. Some time ago I was a serious ebay buyer for a multi-album US collection worth several thousand dollars. To help my decision -- or at least the way I was leaning -- I asked a few questions about particular items (for example, did the collection included a #27, and if so, in what kind of condition?). The seller took great offense, told me I was ignorant, and hurled several other insults my way. Needless to say, I did not make an offer. Last time I checked, the collection was still unsold.