there are no pictures of the items I am bidding on appearing here.... this has not happened before....will it affect my bid?

Hello Jeff,
Thank you for the report about the images. We addressed this after you inquired and wanted to ensure that it is working for you now. eBay made a change on their site and we had to update our software.
We try to be very responsive for issues and feature requests, so please let us know if there is anything else we can do to improve your experience.