Followup. I got another email from this seller. It included several shots of the bass in an apartment or home, so now I have enough photos for Bass Central to determine if it's the same bass.
The only payment method he wanted to use was
www.moneyguards.co.uk . It doesn't make sense for a seller in a small town in Virginia to use a foreign escrow service, does it? I couldn't find it on the main search engines, so I reported the apparent fraud to eBay security. A short time later, the item and seller were removed from eBay.
Yes, you can probably find some good stuff on eBay, and probably many honest buyers and sellers. Lots of easy pickings for criminals and unethical people, though. I'm discouraged by what I've exerienced in just 2 short weeks on eBay...at least 4 bogus second chance attempts!
Although I'm still hoping for a super-Alembic, my quest needs to take a little breather, just a little while.
Again, thank you all for the welcome advise.