I would say that disclosing the reserve price in the description defeats the purpose of having a reserve, except that to my way of thinking there IS no purpose to a reserve except to make the person offering the item look like a dork. Only a moron would make a bid they knew was lower than the reserve. And only a moron would bid on an item without reading the description closely enough to see that it announced the reserve price. But, I have to realize, a large part of the point of eBay is taking advantage of morons -- who wants to sell something for what it's worth, when you can get some dunce to pay a whole lot more?