It subsequently sold for a best offer of $800 in early February 2012 - still 'crazy money' at the time, but a precedent had been set. 
If you followed it when current, or read back through the 10 pages of the archived 7A38-7140 SAA051J thread then you'll know that wasn't the last such occurrence, by any means. Over the thread's 8 years or so duration, it happened many times. Offending eBay sellers were often as not Italian, most notorious among them being dealer Alberto Ulmi, who's used many different eBay ID's over the years, including (by no means exclusively): goffre78, oldantiquestyle, valentinasex and most latterly vintagedesign78.
Without wading back through the whole thread, I'm certain his devious activities featured in it a number of times, most recently in 2019. The relevant posts can be found on page 7 and at top of page 8 of the old thread. In August 2019, he listed another allegedly NOS 7A38-7140, with a typically risible Buy-it-Now price of $2000. Note my comments below:
- 7A38-7140-Black-YellowFace-eBay-August2019-Post.png (135.8 KiB) Viewed 1272 times
Here's the 4 most pertinent of the 11 eBay listing photos:
- 7A38-7140-Black-YellowFace-eBay-August2019-1.jpg (102.61 KiB) Viewed 1261 times
- 7A38-7140-Black-YellowFace-eBay-August2019-4.jpg (96.74 KiB) Viewed 1261 times
- 7A38-7140-Black-YellowFace-eBay-August2019-11.jpg (72.33 KiB) Viewed 1261 times
- 7A38-7140-Black-YellowFace-eBay-August2019-10.jpg (118.11 KiB) Viewed 1261 times
Note the scuffed condition of the case-back (bearing in mind it was supposed to be NOS) and its serial number: 570008.
There were other re-listings in between, including an evidently shilled 7-day auction in October 2019, which made $561. It eventually sold for a much reduced Buy-it-Now price of $700 at the end of November 2019, per my subsequent post:
- 7A38-7140-Black-YellowFace-eBay-Nov2019-Post.png (183.52 KiB) Viewed 1272 times
