Yeah, that makes sense. I might contact him and see, though I would suspect he's expecting a good price on this, and I don't want it to be too high.

Damn! This is the wrong time for me to need to save my money

*edit*
D'oh! I just visited the link to that board you were talking about. I've been there several times! I should have asked those folks. I just haven't been there in a long while.

But thanks, I hope this all ends well

*edit edit*

IIRC there used to be some special rules about ending an auction early on a reserve auction if no bids were placed

I've read through ebay's rules, and it appears you can end any auction early, even if there are bidders. In fact, if that's the case you can even opt to let the current high bidder win! Not what I would have expected!

Still, I feel weird sending the guy a message saying I want to circumvent the process, especially when there's a little message right there telling anyone who receives such a message to report it