I would have bid 10,000 dollars and then when it came time to pay say" hey remember our conversation?" and leave it at that, and pay him the 425 you agreed upon.
A person can also be held liable for a verbal contract.
That's beside the point though....
This guy was hedging his bets in case his ebay auction went sour. That's not how you do business. All that I'm saying is that a man should be a man. If you say you're going to do something then just do it instead of going around telling several folks that you're going to do something and only have the ability to satisfy just one of the obligations that you've made.
It's things like this that many folks went to debter's prison for (when there was such a thing).
I am of the the very strong opinion that we need major reform in the police departments in America. And the very first change there needs to be is that our law inforcement officers need to paid much higher than they are. The average cop only makes $30k per year, which is not nearly enough for the BS they go through. I think that alone would help a lot with the "God complex" that so many cops get because I really think many cops are just plain bitter that they don't get paid squat for what they do! They need to be at least $50k per year!
I got about halfway through the posts and I had to stop here.
I study criminal justice in college and have had a lot of direct contact with the police. In my experience, cops are as most people say and think they are: complete @ssholes. I don't want to get into a big typing session here, but I must say a few things.
1) The system for hiring cops is geared toward finding bad people that will conform to the police department to do what they want. (BAD NEWS) I can give examples if needed.
2) The pay is ridiculously high for all law enforcement. The only cops that make 30K or lower are in areas where you can buy a house for 60k or less. In the bay area, the average salary for cops is over 100k per year. In san jose, after 5 years of service, you do not make any less than 107k per year, average is 125k per year. Do any of you make that? On top of that, if you work for only 30 years, you can retire with most of your paycheck still being paid to you when you retire, plus you retain all your benefits. WOW. The only reason people think the pay is low is because they don't know the facts and they look at numbers portrayed by the media, which everyone knows is biased.
3) I don't know why ANYONE is defending this so called cop, if he is or isn't, because when did it become ok to make a verbal deal without any commitment and lie and cheat someone out of it? If it's because you know people that are cops or some other reason, it's called "blue curtain" where you defend them for no reason.