Christies do state:
"The seller (consignor) and Christie's mutually agree on an appropriate reserve, which is confidential but may not exceed the low estimate."

So they don't allow HIGH Reserves which ebay DO

I remember about 20 years ago seeing some terraced houses
in Warrington where several had used Sylco wooden bobbins
as door handles I always thought they got
paid buttons at the wire works

I didn't think you could cancel a bid

The K-7 wasn't a big step up, but the K-5 from the K20D is
Especially for the high ISO, I can now take photos of birds in the shade at 400ISO which was impossible with the K-20D (which I've still got). Even if you forget to change the exposure (using manual) and the bird looks like a black cat in a coal hole, it can still be pulled back with no loss of quality. Smeggy has pulled back up to 5 stops

I no longer have to be frightened about cropping shots.

I use the K-5 mostly in manual mode and rarely use the bells and whistles, but I'm glad I upgraded. It's like going from a Point and Shoot to a K20D

No it's better for the sale not to go through.

It happened to me recently, the seller had put on an unrealistic reserve I was the highest bidder and I sent the seller a message about 15 mins. before the end saying that I was already bidding more than the item was worth and I didn't think they would get any higher bids, they agreed and let the auction finish without a sale. They then put the item back with a high BIN or OFFER I made an offer at my previous bid price and got the item.

That's not how auctions work, the price ping pongs round the room between bidders and stops at the highest bid.

I always understood that by putting on a maximum bid you were agreeing to pay above what the last bidder was willing to pay.... not suddenly jump up to an unknown reserve

Just for the record I never put on a maximum bid, I put on a snipe and only bid directly if I am the 1st bidder so that the seller at least knows he is getting someone bidding.

Edit: This was in reply to John's post.

That's correct, but your no longer bidding against anybody
Twenty Five bidders stopped at £151.67 making the market value of the lens about £155 max.

In a proper auction the bidding would stop at around £155 and it would be referred back to the seller to see if he was willing to accept the £155 market value or not, even though the reserve hadn't been reached. They never ask the bidder if he wants to buy it at the reserve price without asking the seller first. Ebay just don't tell you what's going on?.... you think you are in an auction, but it's more of a BIN

Very poorly worded letter Items 5 and 6 contradict one another
and to say "Futhermore, there are many users with older Pentax bodies (*ist, K10D, K20D) who aren't upgrading to the current models simply because they're not enough of a leap forward." is nonsense

I wasn't involved in this auction for a Pentax 50mm f/1.2 last night,(I already have two Tomioka f/1.2's) link but I just stumbled across it as it was ending. The price a couple of minutes before was less than the reserve at about £158.... It went for a strange figure £199.99 and I immediately thought what an idiot... he would lose out for a penny to someone bidding a more likely £200. I was curious to see if it was a snipe or not so I looked at the bid history. It wasn't a snipe and was placed 15 secs before the end, giving someone else time to outbid.

I then noticed that the same person was the 2nd highest bidder with a bid put on 7 mins. previous for £160, the actual 2nd highest bidder was for £151.67??

I then remembered something similar happening to me with a snipe where I paid way above the 2nd bid

I've just looked up ebays help pages and they state:
If your maximum bid is the first to meet or exceed the reserve price, the effective bid displayed will automatically be raised to the reserve price. link

The reserve in this instance must have been £199.99

This is totally unfair IMHO, they don't state the reserve and why should the seller have to pay way above what other people are willing to pay? You don't mind paying say £200 if others value the item at £195, but a reserve can be completely above valuation. What's to stop the seller using an unrealistic reserve. Valuations by other buyers become unimportant and are ignored by ebay. In fact if you are a seller that seems the way to go.

Surely the OFT should look into this? Ebay should at the very least ask you to confirm that you are happy to pay way above what the other bidders are willing to pay.

The buyer was lucky in this case, he still got the lens for a bargain price probably because the seller only had a feedback score of 7.

I think the only way a buyer can deal with this is to write to the seller and ask what the reserve is (OK by ebay rules) and if they supply it don't bid if it's higher than say 80% of what you think the items worth.

I'll try a Reverse Charge Call!