The Stratosphere have been operating on this basis for yonks; I suppose what hurts here is that it was likely the bass was a) Vintage and b) perfectly usable as was. The seller obviously feels he's hit paydirt.
I saw a thread on Talkbass last week. The OP was looking for a set of pickups from a PJ Mustang bass, and Fender pointed them in the direction of the Stratosphere!! Fender know and acknowledge this guy, though I doubt they have any sort of contract in place.
I've never really 'dug' the Stratosphere, as the guy chops instruments and then used to list everything twice; once with a high BIN price and once with a low opening bid price. You get lured in with the attraction of a $150 body that he seriously wants $300 for. By the time you've collected enough parts to make a full instrument you've paid well over the odds. Luckily the Stratosphere limits their destruction to modern, off-the-shelf instruments.
A few guys, like the Butcher here, tend to pick up horribly modified vintage gear and then simply recover everything of value and hock them on Ebay. It does sometimes seem that largely complete instruments fall victim to the screwdriver though.
My least favourite is Eddie Vegas. He charges stupid money for banal stuff like vintage Fender brass grounding/shielding plates, or the rubber grommets used to stance pickups in pre-CBS Stratocasters, or whatever. He also tries to promote this celebrity personality online, and can't play guitar very well at all (a common theme with a lot of luthiers, techs and breakers). I don't like being given a lecture on the importance of pre-CBS pickups from somebody who knows three stock blues phrases and hasn't grasped the concept of vibrato.
