My point is only that he was doing nothing to improve his chances of finding bidders

And I'm sure he knew it, and there was probably a very good reason for his not wanting to show a picture, not offering a look-see, and having a "no returns" policy: he was selling something that was a piece of crap worth (if anything) less than a 10th of what he was selling it for. He knew he had a small chance of selling it, but he knew it would be a big bonanza for him if he could find a sucker who would take a chance and buy it.

There are a lot of good deals available on eBay, but there are also a bunch of ripoff artists like that. And they are there because they are are dummies out there who will fall for it. As the man said, there's one born every second.

That said, I've found over nearly 15 years of using eBay that the vast majority of sellers there are honest. You just have to use the feedback system correctly, and use your common sense. Anyone with a sizable number of sales and less than a 97% positive feedback rating has problems, and I wouldn't buy anything from someone with less than a 95% positive rating. And I've learned from sad experience never to buy a musical instrument mail-order from China.