well good for you,
Im sure you've been well prepared. I'm a newbee learning about all the bad sides and ups and downs of ebay.. sigh

well I did have the same type of experience with my DOA Voodoo5 from Annecy From France.  Bought it a an Auchan, and it was sealed so I couldn't say it didn't work.

Came home after a 1287 KM dribe, and I tested the card, don't worry this card was meant for use it was the year mid 2000, so I tested the card, it worked fine in 16 Color mode, I installed the drivers which were added on the CD, and o oh, my PC crashed, the screen went crappy stripes everywhere, I tested it in Linux Debian and there Linux saw the the card as a Voodoo4 4500 and not a Voodoo5 5500. I let the card be examined, by my friend Japie struik, he knows lots about videocards, he found out the VSA-100 -A  was in good shape but it;s memory was dead and VSA-100-B was in bad shape ant it's memory was in good shape, but even Linux Debian crashed in a while, which was a bad sign because Linux Debian is normally uncrashable, it isn't Microsoft which is a big difference.

So I starten E-Mailing that Auchan, but they never replied the Lame basterds. Never got a reply, I sent like 40 Mails in a year time, never got a reply so that was like 734 Euro's down the drain yyaaaaayyy. very Bigh SIGH.

So that is when I stated to get the idea that the Voodoo5  wasn't a safe product, my collegue which lives about 15 KM away from me had the same but he did recieve his money back, so then I back off from 3dfx for good, Anyway i did have the Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP from Geneve Switserland, and I swapped it for Japie's Voodoo4 4500 PCI, just to see what 3dfx FSAA was, and that Voodoo4 4500 PCI still gave me hope and so 2 years later I saw a nice boxed Voodoo5 5500 AGP, it was from a bloke from Canada who was for a short stay in the Netherlands,  his nephew wanted a Voodoo5, be he had one so he sold it on Marktplaats.nl, so I called the guy, asked if that Voodoo5 5500 was still in great codition, becaus my experience with My DOA and that  of my colleague wasn't that great.

His name was Johnathan, he said with true words that this card works perfectly, so I bought it and I'm still useing it ever since, bough it on Friday, March 15 2002, and that was the daythat my good feeling for 3dfx came back

Anyway bad experiences are a risk even when buying new or old gear.

very true gary,
and I am learning it the hard way at the age of 23

Yeah I didn't know you could do that with PayPal. I was thinking of using a credit card, some protection there.

@ Goriath

Three weeks after I paid for the item I had heard nothing from the seller, I got no delivery and he did not respond to emails. I was unsure what to do because in his first emails he seemed to be honestly and serious.
I then checked his feedback on ebay and guess what :
2 other buyer left bad feedback exactly with the same reason I was experiencing. So I filed a complaint in paypal. I guess the seller didnt respond to their emails as well, so I got my money back...

omg, that sounds so paypal to me.
I guess, they are just there to earn the money.

CC is still very insecure I feel.
especially for online payments.

Hey that's the guy that bought a t-shirt from me

He is italian too.
Yes for 3700 revision, 900€ is right price but 1000€ is MAX! All strongly IMHO, of course