How can we fix eBay for "Super Card" bidders?

I'm sure many of you have noticed that the Andrew Luck 1/1 from Contenders is up on eBay - and more than likely, by the time you read this post, the card will have been "sold".  Or at least the auction will be officially over.

If I had a better way of putting quotes above 'sold', I would.  Because nobody thinks this card is going to sell for the price that its at.  I could be wrong.  But with two hours left to go, this card is sitting at $42,100.  And I have a hard time believing that somebody is going to drop that kind of cash on a sports card from the modern era.

I mean, it's a nice enough card to look at, and is probably worth many thousands of dollars.  But 42K?

I don't get it.

$42000 is a lot to spend on a card.  I get that it's a 1/1 - but at this point, it's getting too good to be true.

I mean, for that much money, a person could probably fly to Indianapolis, buy 50-yard line seats and meet Andrew Luck after the game.  I bet that if a person donated $20,000 to the Colts favorite charity, they would let you meet Andrew Luck and get anything you wanted signed.

Again, I could be wrong.  Maybe there is a millionaire out there who is going to buy this card no matter what.

But nobody thinks this card is going to go through.

So what do we do about that?  I love this hobby, but when we start to make a spectacle out of it to this degree, it just becomes a mockery.

My suggestion would be that eBay enact a rule that to bid on an item above $15,000, the potential buyer would have to pay a deposit to place the bid - a deposit of $1000.  If the buyer wins and pays for the purchase, the thousand dollars would go to the purchase price.  And if the buyer doesn't pay, the $1000 is lost and is given to the seller.  And any other potential buyers would have their deposits refunded if they didn't win the auction.

I think that for a price that high, a good-faith deposit isn't that much to ask for.  And it would give us a real value of the card at hand.  Right now we probably have people trying to make the news for an astounding sale price for the card.

 I don't know.  But this auction bothers me for some reason.  I can't put my finger on it.  Part of it is due to the fact that it's Panini, and they're using the auction price for attention - even though they aren't concerned with whether the buyer pays or not.  I'm partly bothered that there isn't a protection built into ebay for false bidding, and it makes the whole industry of buying and selling rare cards look more shady than it needs to.

I don't know - it just feels off to me.

And who decides to end an auction of this magnitude on a Wednesday?  What the hell?