An acquaintance, who knows a few apparently-big-time flippers, gave me some insight into these types of ads. I was always under the impression that they were e-mail harvesting scams or outright rip-off scams. There have been numerous threads here the imply the same conclusions.
At least a few flippers use these nationwide ads to help prime the market, at least price-wise, for an item they will soon be offering. The actual sale may be anywhere, including CL, Audiogon, or Ebay.
The expectation is to get the price point out there. For the flipper, having the CL ad flagged actually helps. The ad disappears, but traces of the ad, including the asking price, turn up on Google and other search engines, as well as on specialty sites that harvest by brand name. The flipper can also list the product on Ebay, then kill the sale or auction early with an "item no longer available" disclaimer.
These actions cost the flipper almost nothing, except a little time. Once the real sale is posted, anyone trying to do some catch-up Internet research only sees the prices, and that the item is seemingly no longer available. And we all know that if something seems to sell repeatedly for a certain price, that is as good a guess at market price as anything.
