Everything about the seller's behavior leads me to believe it was a scam.

He claimed to have lost his job yet creates a 3 day auction against all advince and doesn't care about maximizing the sale? Then he deletes account with 104 feedback on it for "no apparent reason"?

I doubt there is a way to tell, which is why I put it under "fishy" instead of "obvious scam". Maybe he just scammed ebay on the final value fees. Certainly not the only fishy part tho...

Changed to "Still under fire".

^thx!

Given the nature of this item, and the fact the board is most likely real, assuming the case is fake how much would just the PCB be worth? onder:

Besides the obvious reason of being a scammer another common reason eBay closes accounts is nonpayment of fees. High dollar item, empty paypal and a long ago closed bank account = ban until you pay your past fees. 

I thought the fees are deducted from the total automatically.

No, you get invoiced monthly or you can choose to pay right away.
think like an auto payment on your cell phone bill, or you can do a 1 time payment whenever you want too.

Paypal fees are automatically deducted though.

I could just ask him, but whatever I report back with will be misconstrued, so I'm not going to bother.

Does it happen that quickly now?  A few years ago I was helping someone close their account and eBay refused until the fees were paid.  Disputed fees are why they were closing it, so it never happened.  The account is still open today with ~$30 owed.

Whatever you owe from Ebay fees, is automatically deducted, I believe 7 days after the invoice is calculated if you don't pay it your self. So I don't know how someone can have an open account and owe 30 dollars month after month. Ebay has access to your Paypal, which usually has access to your bank account, and can pull the money themselves.

Yup, the seller's behavior was inconsistent and shady.

I would guess that Ebay runs IP checks regularly, or has a program do it for them. It's possible the IP, or some other internet footprint, has been associated with past scamming, and they shut it down.

Ebay fees are not deducted from Paypal unless you set it up that way. Even if it is set up that way all you have to do is remove the money from Paypal before eBay collects it. If your bank account is not current (they only check when you use it) then they can't access money from a long closed bank account. 

^This. Its not rocket science. Isn't there a limit that eBay stops collecting fees at? Like a couple hundred. I can't imagine a couple hundred bucks being enough to close a successful account over.

I thought the maximum fee for any item (except Ebay Motors dales) was only 50 dollars.

EDIT: Maximum is 250.
Source: http://pages.ebay.com/ebaymotors/help/sell/fees.html

Ther is no max fee. You could auction off Planet Jupiter to the Galactic Empire if you wanted and the transaction fee would likely be higher than Earth's entire Gross Domestic Product. They call it "fee-Bay" for a reason!

I posted my source! They can lie about those?! O_o

I think he was just joking, and you are right, $250 is the max fee.