I agree with pwcosol regarding the intense nature of collecting and the attempts to secure a rare piece.
In the case of this specific seller, it looks like he encourages "off-ebay" transactions to some degree. Looking through his "ask a question" section for his auctions there is a note under "buy it now" where he states: "Yes. Generally speaking, if an item does not yet have any bidders we can usually accomodate a Buy It Now request."
While I know that there were already a few bids on the item when he ended it, it is a small step for the seller to just cancel the bids and sell it off ebay. Maybe the person who bought it saw the note from the seller that he accepts buy it now offers and made the attempt, despite the auction already having bidders?
I couldn't even get a bid on his auction since he had a block on international bidders even though the auction stated worldwide shipping.
On a personal note: I have (unfortunately) recently resorted to contacting sellers of specific rare items about a buy-it-now potential after the last big auction I was bidding on ended early (rare Canadian M1899 Savage Arms bayonet). Luckily, another one from a different seller popped up a week later and I won it.
