gotta say I agree with Marcus, it sucks and it's certainly against the terms of ebay, amongst other things they say;

quoted from http://help.ebay.com.au/Help/Policies/Rules_for_everyone/Trading_outside_eBay

"Some examples of prohibited off-site offers include:

• Offering to buy or sell a listed item outside of eBay
• Cancelling a listing to sell to a buyer who has not bid on the item
• Ending a listing early to sell the item at a higher price to the leading bidder
• Offering to sell an item to a bidder in a Reserve Not Met listing
• Offering to sell duplicate or additional merchandise to unsuccessful bidders, other than in accordance with eBay’s rules about Second Chance Offers

How they'd police this is pretty hard to work out unless a disgruntled buyer moaned and it's hard to think they'd really care. Certainly this is interesting as two machines were pulled so a bit harder for the seller to argue a justifiable why.

But I also fail to see any real reason for the seller to behave this way, the Hulk had  a bid of $1250, with still a day to go - hard pressed to say undervalued. One sold in Oct for $1120.

You'd think if you list something with a start price of $0.99 you are going to sell it, I don't buy the argument about starting low to save insertion fees, seems to me with a few photos it will cost about $5 to list, insertion fees are very price insensitive to opening list price. Seems starting low with a long auction might be a good psychological ploy to get bidders going, but it also seems what  inevitably happens is the second bid is almost invariably about $200 and is placed fairly early on.

The argument you are saving fees is pretty facile to me - in reality listing costs about $5 and is gone anyway, sales fees aren't that much either,as I read it about $35 for a sale of $1250.  For everyone who moans about ebay, what did an add in the trading post cost?  Additionally by pulling the sale from ebay you miss the potential overspending must have buyer, with a day to go and what looked like reasonable prices I think I'd gamble on this - or want a big premium to cancel it.

Six million dollar man was at $600 - a fairly big devaluation - but missing boards and legs and still with a day and a half to go.

I'd say pretty suss on behalf of the seller - his name does turn up selling a few pins on ebay.

By the way I hadn't and wasn't bidding nor interested in either of these, just a curious watcher.