It is Sickening how badly PWCC Shill Bids!
 

Simply Sickening.... Every bidder 80% or higher on their auctions, they should be kicked off of ebay!

163 views and no replies, there are a bunch of SHEEP on this chat board!

No, it has just a subject that has been beaten to death lately. There are 2 opinions on this subject. 1) The people that stick up for them. They are paid for their opinion and/or consign to them. 2) Everyone else and they agree with you.

A couple hundred viwes by now. Someone is just sitting there clicking the thread to piss you off :).

I'm at 76%. Just under your threshold

PWCC fatigue.

Yeah, this topic is stale, but it did raise a new question for me:

How does one tell their own % of bids with a certain seller? I can see others, but not mine.

Beaten to death would be putting it mildly.

The %s mean nothing to me. They sell way more cards than anyone else. And some people like to bid $2 at a time. Whatever. It's the rampant bid retractions that are the telltale sign of shenanigans.

Log out of eBay and then go back to the auction without being signed in. Then you can see your own stats.

I agree that percentages mean nothing. I have a high percentage with PWCC because they have the most auctions. Zero retractions.

Thanks Dan.

56% with PWCC. 0 lifetime retractions. 0 shill bids.

Really? I bid with less than ten eBay dealers. What do my stats look like besides the fact I have zero retractions in 18 years. As much as I want to stop fraud and shilling, crying wolf anestitises the problem.

And, yes, I consign to PWCC ......and Probstein, REA, Mile High, brockelman, etc.

shill bidding
 

I think its dumb to spend big money on baseball cards

Another one...

I have been trying to understand for a couple years why so many folks defend them no matter what. Consignors? Shill bidders? Employees? Family members??? They do have their defenders.

For full disclosure I have never consigned anything with them, but I do bid a couple times a year. I always feel like I did something wrong when I win something and like I need a shower. I am going to try not to win anything anymore, but I am addicted to stuff :(

I don't know what that is but it sounds kinky...

This ++. I think I may be over 80%, but they have the best auctions for my specific want list. And, I don't have all day to spend searching the crap on ebay that is listed wrong so it can hit my search, or the overpriced BINS that clog up the internet.

Percentage of bid means nothing in terms of shilling. Get over it. Go after the retractors, they are the enemy.

Adam,
If I could only learn how to spell or hit the F7 key the world would be my oyster. 😁

Many collectors, myself included, bid almost exclusively on pwcc auctions on ebay because most other sellers list high end cards for BIN or obo. This has been discussed many times, and in most cases is not evidence of shill bidding.

I recently sent them a couple of cards and ended up getting more than I would have selling privately, after consignment fees, without the hassle, and without placing any shill bids.

I think it's dumb to criticize others for what they spend their money on.

I agree with the previous posters who commented that percentage of bids with PWCC is not necessarily evidence of shill bidding. I posted on here a few weeks that there were dozens of PWCC auctions that had bidders with many retractions; bidders with many retractions is much more damning, IMO, than bidding mostly with just PWCC.

The vast majority of people just want their stuff and dont care if it is shilled or doctored. This is the perfect market for fraud. As for pwcc defenders certainly some of it imo is self interest.

I agree that bid percentage is not 100% evidence anymore. A few years ago I was bored and starting watching the bidding patterns of 3 big eBay sellers. They are also known acquaintances. They started sharing the shilling accounts to drop the %. Shill accounts are not only used to directly bump the price they are also used to get items more views. Notice all those small bids at the beginnings of auctions, most of those are shill bids also.

One of the main things I look for is a very high amount of bids and very low feedback. When you have someone that is placing 100's or 1000's of bids per month and has low feedback #s that is your shill accounts. If you watch certain eBay accounts they stick out like a sore thumb.

I don't know if I agree with that. I place a lot of bids every month. Sometimes I will place a lowball bid on an item instead of putting it in my watch list. I do it that way because every now and then I end up winning a $20 item for $3 or something like that. I might only win 10% of what I bid on. But I shill nothing. I've been on ebay for 20 years, so I have feedback near 3000, but I've probably bid on 30,000 items over that time.

There are exceptions to almost anything but how is your 3000 feedback considered low?

One shilling account I have watched off and on for a couple years places 1000's of bids per month on a few 100 items and has a feedback of 67.

Me too. I probably bid on 20 or more items a week that I'd take at the minimum but won't chase. I win them occasionally but mostly don't.

Trying to complete my Gehrig run (should I live long enough) they regularly have cards I am looking in vain for elsewhere on eBay.

As with criticism of Mastro too.

Let's please don't forget the lawyers who defend the criminals and fraudsters in our hobby while championing against fraud, LMAO. They should get their accolades too.

It's ridiculous
 

To think that sellers shill just for attention or publicity .

If you were to look at someone like Rick Probstein, we know that he starts auctions at 99 cents. To be honest, ANY graded card is worth 99 cents. So, I could see someone bidding on virtually every Probstein auction. If you were the opening bidder at 99 cents, you could bid on thousands of items a year and only win one out of every 200. But, it would be worth your while probably. Hence, high percentage of bids with one seller, with very low feedback.

It's possible my bid percentage is through the roof with them, simply because I haven't participated in many auctions recently and then went after 15-20 cards on Sunday, placing multiple bids on each.

I represented people who were either involved or witnessed fraud in the hobby. Most if not all cooperated with the government in their cases brought against larger fraudsters in the hobby. All of this is in the public record. As you know, the FBI and US Attorney's Office would agree that my clients' cooperation helped them convict miscreants in the hobby. No one paid me to look the other way.

Edited to add: Leon, I just called you on your cell so as to avoid yet another public pissing contest on the page. I'm in my office if you'd like to talk.

Ditto
 

..up until last night I'd bid on less than a dozen cards , including "make offer" BINS, since January 1st.....then last night I bid on 39 PWCC auctions ; I imagine that skewed my percentage.......but they were 39 snipes , so would that be a factor in the investigation ?

..do "shill" bidders ever make snipe bids ? What if they win ? Isn't it too late to retract if you're the winner ??

..

You'll find cards sometimes being relisted by a seller in his next slate of auctions. If that answers your question. Which it does.

Not true. I had a 1970 Topps football common PSA 7 that would not get a .99 cent bid to save my life. I think I dropped it to a penny, and someone bit. It sold for that penny too.

Pwcc
 

I have won a few items with PWCC. I have lost more. Most of the ones I lose are to legitimate buyers that I recognize by their feedback number or name. I once was bidding on a card that I had seen sell via PWCC 2 weeks prior. The person who won the item the first time was shilling it up. I called PWCC out on it and they retracted all of that bidders activity. I know this happens as I know consigners to Brent who bid on their items. Difficult to police but certainly happens until called out.

Another mystery of eBay...Starts his auctions at $0.99, yet still manages to sell nearly every item for higher price than everyone else. We should all be that good. ;)

LOL, like PWCC there are 2 types with Bill also. Those that received "gift" baskets from him and those that did not.

Agreed...sometimes my .99 cent auctions end at .99 cents. Not the case with those guys.

I listed about 40 items last year with PWCC, didn't shill them, and about 39 of them went for weak prices. Go figure. It's crazy . . .when you look at VCP for my sale cards it was like the prior sale was $496 and mine sold for $183. Go figure.

And I am guessing yours did not have 27 bids after two hours either...

Was reading one set of auction rules recently and it stated that shilling an auction is a violation of a federal crime. I don't know what that law would be. If true, maybe someone should be asking Brent whether he is forwarding on disclosed fraud to his local US Attorneys office.

Thats crazy.

Pwcc shill!!
 

I bid on a card from PWCC just for the heck of it. Within an hour it was bid up just past my bid and now it is just sitting there with the same bid. Do you think I am going to bid on it again? HA HA!! So what does that tell you??? :rolleyes:

Crazy. ^^^
I just had my 1st experience with PWCC...won't no more.
I was expecting to fetch more than I could on my own. Might of as gave the T206 Cobb away.

My PWCC auction closed at 1130pm on 11/4, the night of the last presidential election. I've bored everyone on the board with my bitching. When I complained to Brent he said me an inane response about I should be happy, everyone was at home. Yep, sure dude. Whatever. Maybe I will be lucky enough to have my next one with you close when there is a nuclear attack underway. Don't insult my intelligence. Since then I've listed six figures of items since with LOTG, Brockelman, and others. Live and learn.

Bottom line: If you are not going to commit fraud or have others do it their auctions get sub par results.

What are they doing that you can't do yourself? They do some 20 second write up and mail it.

I think we've mostly all figured it out...

Yes, he shilled that last lot!

there were a few 51 mantle rookies in the 3-4 range ended last night w/pwcc...and I was surprised how low they sold for...definitely not shilled so it would seem!

The psa 3 and 5 were both well centered, and sold above the highest reported sale on vcp. The other two were way off center and sold below averages. This should not come as much of a surprise.