WhereTheHellIsJames?
Explorer
Devil's advocate here, but if you knew the reserve price--in essence, the asking price--would you ever want to pay more?
Would I want to? ... no.
But would I? ... well it really depends on the item. In this case though, I couldn't say, since I have no concept of the reserve, and weather it's even close to reasonable.
I listed a GPS on ebay recently, and my reserve was half of current retail, and at the end of the auction, I received over current retail for the item from the wining bidder. He could have gotten it for my reserve if nobody else bid on it, but other bidders also saw the value of the item, and at the end of the auction I got more than double what I would have been happy taking for it.
The market will dictate the value of an item above its reserve, but it would be helpful to at least have a base point to estimate build costs for this truck. Who knows, maybe the reserve is many thousands over fair market value... at that point, why would I even bother estimating, or wasting time researching?
Just my $.02 on the matter