
I am not sure about bidding against ourselves, who is ourselves exactly? QLer's? It is surely a free market.
Whether it is Ebay, SellMyRetro or Gumtree are you saying we should ban promoting items, QL or otherwise on here? There are three businesses that I am aware of that still have something to do with the Sinclair QL (but not exclusively), for the QL community they need to keep going.
There is a difference between bidding on an item which is an auction, and paying a fixed price. Ebay does both and SellMyRetro does both, I don't know about Gumtree I don't look at it. Whether the fixed price is over-inflated? Well that is a matter of personal opinion IMHO.
Any person wanting to make, sell or distribute QL related stuff will only be able to do so, if the market is there. If the market is there, they will sell it.
If you wanted something badly enough, you would pay for it.
There have been at-least two occasions where I have bid on items seen in eBay where I have also posted here, letting the forum know about them. Whether or not people have then bid on those items is irrelevant as I have no way of knowing if they knew about them already. I subsequently won those items due to the amount of cash I was prepared to part with. It is not a Dutch auction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction. My approach to the QL community is for more people to get involved, be aware, participate in some form.
That's my two-pennyworth. [steps off soap-box]