All I can say is I have known Bill Mastro since I was a kid and learned everything about the industry from him (The good and the bad...just to same some BS replies on this post). Even through all the bad publicity I still chose Mastro Auctions for my consignments for the same reason Jeff mentioned in his posts. The fact is its human nature to dwell on a certain negative instance, but one still needs to measure the good from the past. The professionalism, knowledge and service was impeccable and when my consignment of the highest graded Walter Mails game goes for under $10K....I have a hard time believing shill bidding was common practice. Bottom line is...you go with the one who brings the consignor the best terms, has the largest membership to get your item in front of them and one who has the knowledge and service to boot

Just to be clear, Mike...

You've known Mastro for years.
You're aware of all that's been said about them.
You are AGREEING with Jeff.

And you rolled that all together and decided to stick with...Legendary?

Mike S, I have known Bill Mastro for years and he did a lot of good things for the Hobby. I have read all the negative input from past posts and press reports. I am willing to wait until all information is ruled on. Also he and Rob Lifson now at Robert Edwards Auctions, at one time worked very closely together in the 70's and 80's didn't they? This is the Auction House that everyone likes right now. If I am wrong about that , let me know. If the statement about Rob Lifson is wrong, then I will retract it.

Joe

MikeS,

Good luck getting paid. (a)

Brian



a. I say this to anyone consigning an item to any house

Brian, did you have a problem getting paid from a Mastro Auction?

Joe

Are we supposed to get something from that? I'd like to hear if somone has an issue with REA or Rob Lifson. From all I've gathered, he and his operation are as squeaky clean as they come in this business. Rob Lifson has been an FBI consultant and a Justice Department expert witness on pretty much all issues of concern in this hobby/business. His statements of ethics and practice are by far the strongest I've seen in this area.

If someone has something different to say, I'd like to hear it. I'm not interested in loose insinuations.

Cheers,
Blair

Jim-

Just saw your post and yes...I am aware of all the bad rap on Masto, I agree with Jeff and I still chose Legendary (Mastro at the time). The fact is they did a great job with my item back at the live event following the National back in 2008 with regards to exposure/marketing and didn't have a problem getting paid. The reason why I chose them is they showed the most interest in representing my item and they truely wanted my business. I know that software has changed over the years and I was never a fan of the two option bid..."my max bid" and "straight line bid" for this confusion would hurt the buyer and benefit the house. I know some sites still use this method and I know bidders who thought they were leaving the max bid, but straight lined it instead and entered into a binding contract. Fact is, as a bidder, when you plug in your max....you need to expect that's what you going to pay and if it goes lower then that's your bonus. Look at the auction format you are participating in and bid accordingly. In conclusion, last time I checked this wasn't the most ethical hobby out there. After reading many posts, I'm sure no one in this forum has ever misrepresented their item in a business transaction (oh I didn't see that spider crease), or took advatage buying something off somone who didn't know what they had. Is that ethical.....no...but it happens.

Nope I don't consign to them so I have no fears for myself. I do have a problem with anyone having a problem getting paid what they are due, when they are due it, by whoever they submit to.

The only way to obtain cards is through auction houses? Private transactions, BST, trades, the National and many other means don't exist any more? You should either submit to shill bidding or give up the hobby? By the way, I can think of an auction house other than B&L that has not been embroiled in a scandal.

ready when you are...

By the way, I'm not telling anyone what they should or shouldn't do. I'm just saying that for me personally, I would feel like a hypocrite if I told myself that I wouldn't allow myself to bid with Legendary b/c of their past fraud but go ahead and bid with the other guys who I also believe have committed past fraud. :confused:

Obviously, auction houses are not the only way to obtain cards, but they do seem to have about 90% of what I want to collect.

Um, watch your tenses there, boy. I'd hate for you to think that all is well going forward.

sorry, ongoing fraud.

They are young yet..... give them some time. ;)

"Fact is, as a bidder, when you plug in your max....you need to expect that's what you going to pay and if it goes lower then that's your bonus."

Surely part of this equation should be the expectation on the part of the bidder of a legitimate "arms length" transaction.

Apparently not. This sort of mentality is what allows shill bidding to go on unfettered: "oh well, I paid what I thought the card was worth so it's all good." But it's not all good if the card could have been had for less than your max bid and for less than what you thought the card might be worth. This is why it is an auction and not a tag sale. Also, when a card is shilled to a level beyond what the card would have sold for minus the fraud, the next time that card comes up for auction either in that grade or a different one, a false precedent has been set. Even if no direct fraud occurs in the latter auction, the impact of the prior fraud is real.

And sadly, why am I saying this....again? How many more years do we need to hear the basic concepts of Fraud 101? This is pretty basic stuff, right?

Jeff you and I are in agreement and that was the point of my post.

what's the solution Jeff?

The only solution on a local level is if you think you are getting hosed, don't get in the pool.

The solution is for law enforcement to go after these auction houses, and if they are convicted of fraud, to penalize them heavily.

As far as whether or not to bid, I don't have an answer. Certainly Jeff is correct that if you leave a ceiling bid and the lot gets to the limit due to shilling, it's not acceptable at all. You should only have to pay one increment above the last real bid. Period. And if one were to boycott all auction houses where even the possibility of fraud exists, then it's time to find a new hobby.

To follow up on Jeff's point, I wish I had a dollar for every time a member of this board posted something along the line of "I don't have to worry about shill bidding because I just plug in the max I'm willing to pay and forget about it."

Well I always thought if you bid with your head and your budget in mind, you wouldn't overpay. Of course many will overbid because they cherish and want the item for their collection so they set a high personal expectation. I think most people still live in that "last 5 sec" rule of Ebay where u plug in a high spend and most of the time its concludes lower than your bid....in instances where you win. Most sites offer the 30min rule and this is where you have control of your own destiny. Plugging in a max bid with two weeks to go is the bidders fault if their intention is to get the item lower than what they bid. I understand most peoples gripe and true it's unethical, but I haven't seen an indictments so far. What blows my mind about "shill bids" is that in the end the buyer still got an authentic lot. I went to the CCorner after reading many of member posts, but this site still remains in business and completely makes the industry look bad with all those great autographs and Morales certs. People are still bidding on these and this is true fraud, but no one seems to care except poke fun. Think its time to drop the scapegoats and move on. If anything, bidders and collectors should come away from this to be weary, do your research and find the best house or site that serves your needs. If you don't like another site/house...then don't use them, but don't tell others what not to do unless you have a personal instance to share and focus on the good traits of the company you like.

People may make light of CC over on the memorabilia side but everybody wants them shut down. That they have been able to operate the way they do for so long and still be in business says a lot to me about law enforcement. I'm sure the feds know about what goes on over there, and yet what have they done about it? Nobody really understands how it has gone on for so long. Clearly, CC understands how the system works.

And Mike to touch on your other point, people who bid on baseball memorabilia are not always rational. They bid emotionally and often ending up going way past their intended maximum. And while it's not good to blame the victim, unfortunately auction houses know this and take advantage of them. This has been going on as long as I've been in this business, and probably longer.

I don't for a second condone shill bidding, but to me, as an issue, it pales next to card doctoring/misrepresentation of memorabilia.

Yes Peter, you would think we all collect used cars wouldn't you?

I agree Peter. Overpaying for something isn't good, but at least you get the item. Buying an altered or counterfeit piece is much worse, because you get nothing. But it's all bad.

Of course it isn't necessarily an either/or, as I am sure there are countless instances of paying a shilled price for an altered card or a misrepresented item.

I have to laugh at some of the reasoning on this board, seriously.

Ok, one last time, very slowly:

if you are defrauded by x number of dollars due to a shill bid and you receive an authentic card at an unauthentic price, you are out x dollars.

if you purchase an altered card with the assumption it is not altered, you have been defrauded by the amount that the card is worth as advertised as unaltered minus the amount that the card is worth advertised as altered. If that difference is x dollars, then each fraud described above has the same financial impact on the buyers.

Mike, as for the mentality that "if you bid with your head and your budget in mind, you wouldn't overpay" this does not excuse shill bidding which raises the final price to a level that that the bidder still believes is appropriate if he is 'bidding with his head.' All that means is that his 'head' is unaware of the true value of the card.

And Jeff P, the only solution is law enforcement or civil lawsuits brought against the auction houses. It is clear to me based on the high incidence of lowlifes that head up most of the auction houses in our hobby that they cannot be trusted to police themselves. I wrote about this in 2006(!) that it was clear to me why fraudsters (convicted or soon to be) gravitate towards this hobby/business. It's just too easy for them to steal in an unfettered, unmonitored fashion. And reading some comments on this thread, the victims themselves don't even want to be considered victims most of the time. It's almost as if the government/law enforcement need to protect some of the victims here from themselves.

the bus that just went over me :)
 

Hey, you guys quit throwing Scott and I (B & L) under the bus, would ya'?;) We are still young in the auction business but have done no wrong and our intent is to do no wrong. If you want to see real market prices check our auctions. I can't really give opinions of other auction houses but only very few come to mind where I don't think anything wrong has happened. I will leave it at that :). best regards

Yes Jeff you can look at it in that reductionist way, but typically the gap between the value of a card altered v. as holdered will be a hell of a lot more than a bid level or two.

I don't doubt that. But I also think that in any given auction, the incidence of shill bidding per lot might be greater than the incidence of altered cards offered.

And for argument's sake, if an altered card is in a numbered holder the owner of that card very well might be able to get his purchase price back upon resale; the same cannot be said for the buyer of a shilled card at auction. How many of you have sold cards on ebay and wondered why the hell you can't get back even close to your purchase price?

Depends who the consignors are. :D:D And I would go with altered cards, generally speaking.

Jeff for non-commodity cards, the conversion of one buyer to a seller can significantly affect the price. EDIT TO ADD Also ebay's increment structure inherently makes for lower prices. So shilling is not always the explanation.

None of this is an exact science without a review of the bidding records of any auction. And we have learned from Mastro's destruction of bidding records that the crooks will do anything they can to avoid having to disclose them. Doug Allen probably still has his third grade baseball jersey squirreled away somewhere but bidding records? No, they had to go.

Not a fair conclusion Jeff. eBay's 24/7 365 format makes it tough to get buyers' attention. An auction that takes place on a specific date with an accompanied catalog permits buyers to make the date in the calendar. Not everyone who buys cards can sit around scanning ebay every day.

Further I am quite certain that the number of altered cards in holders and bogus authenticated memorabilia far surpasses the incidents of shill bidding (even if you are counting number of individual shill bids placed). I am absolutely certain that if you were able to measure how much the card doctor/dealers have made over the years it would dwarf the total amount of bids which constitute shill bids over the same period. It is safe to say that the principals of auction houses are not making as much as individual dealers who trim up cards, and by whatever means available to them, get them into holders and then pass the worthless items off to collectors.

What percentage of lots in a given Mastro Auction (or any other suspected auctions) do you all think were/have been shilled?

The "hobby" is an inanimate object. It can't be ethical or unethical. Only the people in the hobby can display those traits. When they do, the best solution is to avoid doing business with them. Period.

Jeff,

With the auction house I work for I've never witnessed any shilling, alterations or knowing misrepresentation of any item. We take pride in what we do. We are hopeful that hobbyists will take stock in us and have confidence that they are taking part in an honest auction. Those who know me personally know I wouldn't take part or stay silent on any questionable activities.

Calvin....I understand your point, but just a heads up....if you think selling via Ebay warrants your ROI from an item previously purchased then I want to buy what you're smoking. Its a trading post that involves many variables that auction houses don't deal with. Houses use marketing and membership to satisfy demand and focus on the niche of whichever industry they focus in. Ebay membership if vast, but still does not have a huge membership of deep pocket individuals willing to sit there and sift through yours and other sellers lots. Everyone should know that the majority of sales off Ebay are going to go below book and there will be times where it sells so high you have to sit back and scratch your head. If you have a chance can you send me the most recent 4000 page catalog that Ebay puts out...I must not be on the mailing list.

Here's one way an unethical auction house operates:

Auction houses get to know the bidding habits of their best customers, and know that certain whales, particularly those who are working on top registry sets, will almost never stop bidding on a rare high grade card, say a "1 of 1." And they pretty much know that if they bump a bid on one of those cards their customer will certainly come back and bid again. These bidders, or marks, will never win any of these pieces unless a world's record price is achieved.

I know often the board is incredulous when they see a high grade vintage card selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and don't believe the transaction ever took place. And there is always a board member who seems to know who won it and therefore assumes the transaction was legitimate. So the problem is not whether the card sold, which it did, but how it got to that stratospheric level.

That is why so many of the whales leave the hobby rather abruptly. At some point they discover how they were treated and they drop out. And this has been going on for a very long time.

Greg/Mike: I didn't mean to use ebay as a sole example for resale. Poor resale prices in consecutive auctions for the same cards is evident as well, the only difference being lack of fraud in the latter auctions.

And Greg, I appreciate your insight as to altered cards and would love to hear more. As you know, my belief that Mastro (and other auction houses) have been engaged in shill bidding for years was first sparked simply by looking at the anecdotal proof from the auctions themselves: bidding patterns, final prices, etc. I thought it was pretty obvious and I feel certain today that my beliefs were well-founded. I'm not an expert on altered cards but would appreciate learning more as to how the doctors work on alterations and, just as importantly, work with the auction house heads.

Jeff,

I am in no way implying that shill bidding does not exist. Was just trying to point out that it is my opinion that card and memorabilia altering is a much larger business.

We are presented graded altered cards and, more often than not, the alteration is right in front of our face yet buyers will purchase the card anyway. My experience has demonstrated that many buyers prefer to just rely on the grade assigned to the card rather than making their own assessment of the quality of the card. Be it a desire to fill a hole in the collection or a lack of expertise, they will rely on the graded holder to tell them what they are getting, even if it is misleading. So it is not like there has been a precedent set by collectors to ever mitigate their damages.

Bids are placed in auction houses without the public knowing who they are bidding against. How can any of us, absent complete bidding records, say with certainty that we were shilled? Shouldn't we try to clean up the obvious before we start looking for things which are more uncertain and less quantifiable?

When a top all is placed, and if it is maxed out artificially, that is the price the buyer was willing to pay. Not implying that is what they should pay or how the system should work but how does that differ in form to a buyer deciding to plop down money for his encapsulated trimmed card in which he will be overpaying for that card whose true value is a very small percentage of what is being considered?

Don’t know about you but if I had to pick I would prefer to pay too much for an item which is exactly what it is deemed to be rather than to buy something which I can later find out to be a product of some card doctors efforts that never should have been graded.

Exactly Barry...is there any other reason to shill a 1978 Topps baseball set?

Greg, shill bidding is provable without bidding records if the circumstantial evidence is there; proving it is also helped with co-conspirator or other witness testimony. As for the altered cards in our hobby, the first thing that I suppose has to happen is that the people who are doing it need to be outed as do the sellers of altered material. Some people have been willing to do it, others won't

Finally, if a top-all bid is placed, the fact that the bidder is willing to pay that amount does not in any way mitigate the fraud committed by a shill bidder who places a bid below that ceiling, nor does the top-all bid equate to what the card is properly valued. Only when there are legitimate bids placed in an auction can such a true figure be reached. Of course, if a collector makes an arms-length offer for such a card at that price then it's a different story, but we're not talking about that here.

Shill bidding is unquestionably bad, but if I were asked the one thing I am most concerned with, that would have the most deleterious effect on the hobby, it would be altered cards that have made their way into holders. I would view that as close to epidemic, and would put shill bidding a distant second with regard to what collectors should be worried about. I think the grading industry needs a complete overhaul. I don't like it.

And I'm not talking about the VG card that sells for $100. I'm talking about the cards that make it into the set registry collections. Oh Lordie....

Jeff,

Think it is much easier to prove a graded card is trimmed or recolored, for example, and trace it back to the submitter than to prove shill bidding, even with a co-conspirator's testimony.

With the quantity of cards which have been graded that should not have been graded, I think we are talking about an enormous amount of money. I know of two cards which combined sold for over 3 million dollars that are not worth a small fraction of that. How many 1977 Topps set would have to be shilled to get to 3 million dollars?

I too know of cards easily worth six figures that are holdered by one of the "respected" grading services, and they are bogus. They have had major restoration. And I know the owner is devastated. This was something he put away for retirement and now that money is no longer there. He was a victim of a major fraud. It's a really bad situation, and when it becomes public this industry will be in for a very rude awakening.

Barry,

The public has had many rude awakenings and just go right back to sleep.

Shill bidding is actually incredibly easy to prove if you have subpoena power and the target does not destroy every single bidding record. Bidders that do not exist or bidders who had no idea they were placing a bid are about as strong proof as you need to prove the fraud.

As for shill bidding v. alteration, we can talk about what is worse all day long but is there a prohibition against outing and fixing both? I don't have a problem speaking my mind about this stuff and naming names; you guys should as well.