ebay finds that PWCC engaged in shill bidding?

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Travis, redo your numbers by dollar volume and not sheer number of sales and see what you come up with. Even if your numbers are right, and I doubt it, they’re misleading because the vast majority of cards are relatively inconsequential. It’s the big cards where the shenanigans are.

Ya, I agree that shill bidding is more of a problem with higher end collectibles. But if we're discussing the impact of shill bidding on market prices in general, then it's more relevant to look at the effects of widespread shilling activity than it is to focus on a few select auctions where a whale might have gotten fleeced. If you look at the Jordan rookie PSA 10 that sold for 840k as an example, that may have had a huge impact for the parties involved in that one transaction, and perhaps it had a small effect on one or two other sales of PSA 10s, but it didn't affect the broader Jordan market or even the market for that same card in lower grades hardly at all. I was paying attention too, because I have a few mint 86 Fleer Jordans and they didn't go up at all after that sale despite it setting a new record.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by BobC

Didn't say it defines it, just that you need to consider it as maybe a more true reflection of FMV, as opposed to simply accepting the underbidder as setting the market value. There's no way to know that high bidder is a sole outlier, of if for whatever reason a number of serious and financially capable collectors who maybe wanted that same card as much as, or more than, the evental winner, didn't even know of the auction or couldn't participate in it.

Peter, in your example when you say no one else on Earth thought that particular card was worth more than $50, you are literally assuming that every person on the planet looked at the auction, and passed on that card. I would guess that most auctions have several hundred to maybe a few thousand bidders in them, at most. I would speculate that not every auction house or dealer has access to every possible collector that is out there. Heck, I've been collecting for 30+ years and can't begin to tell you how many auctions I've never looked at or bid in, and I know I'm not alone in that. So that is why I'm saying past auction sales can be a good indicator towards what a card's current FMV is, but shouldn't always be taken as the only major component or as a sole final answer. You even responded to someone on how you set prices for cards you put on the BST forum and said yourself you don't just look at recent auction sales, so basically we have agreed all along. Just maybe a differecnce in the weighting of factors you may choose to look at. Again, to me the definition of FMV is what a willing buyer agrees to pay an unrelated and willing seller for an item in an open, arms length transaction. Not what an underbidder was willing to pay in a particular auction.

I think this is a good point about auctions not always being a good measure of the true market value of an item. It really depends on what that item is and how much current demand and supply exist in the marketplace. For something that gets traded often with both abundant supply and demand like a Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome rookie card, recent auction prices are a pretty good predictor of what the next one will sell for because there are enough buyers out there for the card to be reliably bid up to its full potential, but also enough copies of the card to ensure that if someone misses out on it they won't be upset because they can easily just buy the next one.

However, for cards that are more rare, or that have a much smaller market, like say cards that sell for between 5k-25k, an auction is usually a terrible way to sell it unless you're really hard up for cash. You could make a pretty good living just by buying rare cards like these at auction and then selling them as 'buy-it-now' options if you're patient enough to wait for the right buyers to come along later. It's pretty common for a 20k card to only sell for 15k at auction because it just didn't happen to get enough exposure that particular week. For the really high end cards though, say 25k+, those usually get enough exposure from the large auction houses for auctions to bring in true market values again. But I would almost never sell a rare 10k card at auction on eBay without setting a reserve price. The risk that it sells below market is just way too high.

[Snowman]

I also think the fact that eBay charges you so much to set a reserve price on your auctions is a big part of why there's so much shill bidding on their platform. It costs them nothing to allow you to set a reserve price, yet if you want to place a $10k reserve on an auction, they charge you a $250 fee lol. That's so ridiculous. They're practically begging people to shill bid with a burner account instead. If they just allowed it for free, or for a $1 fee or something like that, then it would get rid of the vast majority of shill bidding. But ebay makes more money by charging for it and allowing people to shill bid instead, so the current shill-bids-a-plenty landscape at eBay shouldn't be a surprise.

[Arazi4442]

Originally Posted by Snowman

LOL. No. That's an 'a' and an 'i'... Trail, as in hiking trail.

What a shame, that would have been fantastic.

Welcome to the board!

[Johnny630]

Will they continue to run up cards on their own auction site ?

[hcv123]

I do not participate in, nor in any way support or condone shill bidding! I agree with Travis that while shilling is 100% wrong on every level it in and of itself doesn't have as large an impact on a given market - people's fear and greed have a much more significant impact.

From what I have read here I think people are getting confused between shill bidding and "fair market value" or the effect that shill bidding has on fair market value. I think it might be helpful to start by borrowing the following from Investopedia:

"In investing, fair value is a reference to the asset's price, as determined by a willing seller and buyer, and often established in the marketplace.

Fair value is a broad measure of an asset's worth and is not the same as market value, which refers to the price of an asset in the marketplace.

In accounting, fair value is a reference to the estimated worth of a company's assets and liabilities that are listed on a company's financial statement."

In my opinion, while there have been many excellent and accurate points made, the ultimate answer lies in consideration of all of them.

A fairly run auction is in a best case scenario a fair determinant of market value on that day, with all the participants in the auction that day Someone (inaccurately) stated once the high bidder has won an item in an auction the item is theoretically only worth what the second highest bidder was willing to pay. What is inaccurate about that is it assumes all willing buyers participated in the auction - and that variable theoretically can change day to day both with peoples knowledge of and participation in a given auction on a given day as well as different collectors decisions to add and remove cards from their want lists. It is just not simple. Do you know some auction houses (At least a couple of "biggies") per their rules (how many times have you read them?) have the right to bid on a consignor's behalf up to a "reserve" price. How is that different than "shilling"? It is disclosed as a term of the auction - does that make it okay?

If there is a private sale at a certain price level, similarly it is in a best case scenario a fair determinant of market value on that day, with all the participants in the market where it sold that day

The more sales there are, the more useful information exists to help as a guide for an interested buyer to have an idea of what a "fair market value" might be. But what about all the other variables - Is the example raw or graded? Who graded it? Although the card is theoretically "the same" - I don't think many would argue that there are different "fair market values" for raw vs graded cards as well as cards graded by different companies.

As highlighted in a previous post - auctions are NOT always the best place to get the highest price for your cards - I love buying certain items out of auctions for this very reason! It is also (SHAMELESS PLUG COMING) why part of my business is private consignment sales - it offers true price protection with integrity! If my consignor doesn't like an offer, it doesn't "sell to the highest bidder" - we wait for someone willing to pay more.

A factor that has been touched on, but not addressed directly (I think) is the inefficiency of the market - or the opportunity for arbitrage. Unlike the stock market which is a single destination for all potential buyers to meet all potential sellers, there is no such place for trading cards - The market is hugely fragmented - multiple small and large auction houses, shows, bulletin boards, Ebay, garage sales, etc. The way it exists currently - there is NO WAY anyone can make a claim that any single sale is a "fair market value"

So what is a collector to do? Know your market. As Travis stated the more current recorded sales there are of a specific card/grade/grader - the higher degree of confidence we can have of current "market value". The fewer the sales the less confidence we can have (lower OR higher) of the "market value".

There is no pricing ("market value") perfection. To some, the card matters more than the money, to others, the price they pay more than the card - neither approach is wrong! There is nothing wrong with Butch's approach - he bids what a card is worth to him (however he choose to determine that!)

Remember CPU? CCP? Beckett? SPort Americana guides? Standard catalog? Were they fair indicators of "current market value"? Sometimes - but more often not.

Overall just so well stated I wanted to repeat it:

Originally Posted by BobC

As you said, your definition is market price at "auction". I always heard the FMV of something was what a willing buyer would agree to pay an unrelated willing seller for something in an open, arms length transaction. So if the party looking to buy a particular card is willing to pay $100 for it, but because they are seeking to buy it through an auction and end up getting it for less than their max bid, it doesn't mean they couldn't have run across that same card with a dealer at some show and gladly paid the $100 he was asking for it, right? So if that is the case then what is the correct market value of that card, at least at that point in time? It sure isn't just one increment over $50.

Plus, when dealing with an auction you are limited by who decides to participate. There is no guarantee that all potentially interested parties are participating or even aware of a particular auction, or a specific card in it. Of course the same goes for card shows and individual dealers selling a card outright, they don't have all potential buyers necessarily aware of and looking to buy a card they have for sale either. And the thing about an auction is that you normally don't know the maximum amount someone who ends up winning an item for is actually willing to pay for it, which to me would be it's true market value. We really only know what the second highest bidder attending/participating in that particular auction was willing to pay.

You may be biased in that you operate an auction house and possibly tell potential consignors that an auction is the best way for them to get the highest possible market value for their items they look to sell, but is it always? I've heard of people saying items they put up for auction didn't go for what they thought they would and were sometimes disappointed in what an item ended up selling for, and I would suspect that has happened in your auctions as well. At best, auction and Ebay results are good indicators of where the "market" is approximately on cards, but to truly know what someone is really willing to pay for an item you need to know the max amount they would have gone for that item. That would be a more true "market" value. But still, think about how many times here just on Net54 you've seen someone post how after the fact they heard about something they didn't know was being auctioned, or how they were in an auction, but because there were so many items they were going after they couldn't afford to go more on some items they wished they could have. Those kinds of things affect final hammer prices negatively, but is that hammer price on such items truly an indicator of accurate "market" prices then?

I've always felt that most people acquiring items through auctions are doing so because they expect to get things for less than what they perceive market value to be. Why else would you always hear of so many people talking about being run up in their max bids? They are ticked because they fully expected to pay less, and they have every right to be if somehow their max bid amount became known and was used solely to run up what they paid. Granted, there are marquee and uber rare items, like the recent PSA3 Wagner sale, where no one has any idea where the market truly is. So they consign it to auction to hopefully get the top price, and it sells for a record $6.6M. But what if instead of an auction the consignor instead put it up for sale at say $7.5M, and the same person who won it for $6.6M happily pays the $7.5M for it because he/she thinks it is really worth $10M. So in that case your "auction" value is way below what a more true FMV should be.

And maybe a more measurable indicator that auctions aren't always perceived as the best way to get maximum market value for a card is Ebay itself. When Ebay started out it was primarily an auction platform, but if you looked at pre-war vintage card sales over most recent years, the number of actual auctions is usually around 1,000-2,000 at any point in time. Meanwhile the total number of pre-war vintage cards being listed was more like 40,000-50,000. At least it used to be before Ebay changed the search filters and you could look up pre-war baseball as a specific category. Point is, the vast majority of sellers did not feel auctions would get them the max market value. And yes I know there are certain dealers well known for their pages and pages of supposedly overpriced BIN listings, but that doesn't change the fact that if they felt they would get a comparable/higher max price by putting their items up for true auctions instead that that is what they would be doing.

There is no perfect indicator of a card's FMV, and it most definitely fluctuates over time, especially during this current pandemic period we're going through. But at least to me, it isn't as simple or accurate to say a card's FMV is what it just sold for in the most recent auction.

What you are missing is the potential inclusion of potential buyers who did not participate in that auction on that day as possible changes in market demand:

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Except that after that sale occurs, that buyer is no longer in the market and the “price” becomes what the next person will pay. And now we are back to the auction scenario of second highest bidder plus one increment

Franklin was wrong!! A penny saved is worth more than a penny earned. You will have to pay tax on a penny earned and it is therefore worth less than a penny whereas a saved penny is in post tax dollars and worth a full penny:

Originally Posted by drcy

As Benjamin Franklin said, "A penny saved is a penny earned."

SUPER question! Any tax professionals?:

Originally Posted by BeanTown

So for those PWCC customers who want to take their items out of the PWCC vault, will that create a taxable event?

Firstly I don't think your assumption is accurate. That said, as I think you stated in another post - how you determine your asking price for cards you sell - we do the best we can with the information we have and make individual choices of what makes sense or works for each of us:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

So let's assume PWCC prices have been widely inflated AND they have had a gravitational effect on other prices. The whole market is inflated. What's the appropriate response assuming you still want to try to win certain cards?

Perhaps a new term needs to start being used - "Auction price" rather than "market price" or "fair market value". I have sold comparable cards for more and for less than recent auction sales. A single auction (or other) sale is not a reasonable determinant of "fair market value". It was the highest price a specific auction participant was willing to pay for that card on that day - it is certainly a relevant piece of information in a market value conversation, but not market value in and of itself:

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

Market price at auction needs two people to determine it accurately, and they need to be working in good faith. If one person is willing to pay $100 and the next highest is willing to pay $50, the market price is one bid past $50, not $100.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

So for those PWCC customers who want to take their items out of the PWCC vault, will that create a taxable event?

No, it's not a taxable event unless you sell it. At least not with respect to income tax. However, if you purchased items on ebay and had them shipped directly to your PWCC vault, which allowed you to avoid paying sales tax on those transactions since they are located in Oregon, then you will have to pay any applicable sales taxes that you previously avoided when they ship those cards back to you unless you have a resale certificate on file with PWCC.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

No, it's not a taxable event unless you sell it. At least not with respect to income tax. However, if you purchased items on ebay and had them shipped directly to your PWCC vault, which allowed you to avoid paying sales tax on those transactions since they are located in Oregon, then you will have to pay any applicable sales taxes that you previously avoided when they ship those cards back to you unless you have a resale certificate on file with PWCC.

Correct. I have been told that you may not owe sales/use tax in some jurisdictions if you wait long enough, but not sure of that. General concept is right. Of course how many are going to pay it.

[1954 topps]

Originally Posted by Snowman

No, it's not a taxable event unless you sell it. At least not with respect to income tax. However, if you purchased items on ebay and had them shipped directly to your PWCC vault, which allowed you to avoid paying sales tax on those transactions since they are located in Oregon, then you will have to pay any applicable sales taxes that you previously avoided when they ship those cards back to you unless you have a resale certificate on file with PWCC.

What if someone in CA wants to save 7.25-10.25% on sales tax. Can they drive up to Oregon, request their items from the Vault in person and commit tax evasion? There has to be something in place to prevent that from happening?

Also, I thought this was genius and timely marketing from the folks at Love of the Game! "When it's time to consign your valuable vintage cards and memorabilia, integrity should be at the top of your list of requirements."
It goes on to say "Your cards are important enough that they shouldn't be locked in a vault for future resale" Wow that's a burn for both PWCC and Goldin if I ever heard one.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by 1954 topps

What if someone in CA wants to save 7.25-10.25% on sales tax. Can they drive up to Oregon, request their items from the Vault in person and commit tax evasion? There has to be something in place to prevent that from happening?

No, I believe you have to show proof of residence. Although, who knows with PWCC. If the rumors are all true, one might be inclined to assume they have an on-site service set up for you to "move to Oregon" while picking up your cards? Perhaps they'll even file your taxes for you as well? lol

[BobC]

Very eloquent post Howard, I think you drop the mic after that one.

I will respond to the one separate topic you asked about in regards to Beantown's original post and question of if someone deciding to take their items out of PWCC's vault is subject to a taxable event for doing so.

First off, he didn't stipulate what type of tax he was referring to. In this case I believe you have two possible choices, Income Tax or Sales Tax.

For Income Tax purposes, as long as the item isn't being removed from the vault to be sold and the owner is merely moving an item elsewhere and still retains ownership of it, there is no Income Tax event that has taken place......period.

Now as for Sales Tax, I'm going to say removal of an item from a vault is probably not a Sales Tax triggering event either. I'll explain why I only said probably and how someone could end up having a sales tax issue. First, remember there are two different ways an item you own could get into the vault.

1. You bought the item and actually took possesion of it at your home or elsewhere, and then you later on either shipped it off to or delivered it personally (think of vault submissions made at the National) to PWCC.

2. You bought the item (say off Ebay or from an AH) and had it shipped directly to PWCC in Oregon, or you bought the item from PWCC and just had them keep it in their Oregon vault for you. In either case you never personally received or took possession of the item before it went straight into the vault in Oregon.

In regards to scenario #1, I would assume you would have already paid whatever state sales tax was due on your purchase, depending on which state you live in and had it delivered to, or which state you were actually in when buying it in person. And in case you live in and had it delivered to you in a state with no sales tax, or personally bought it while in a state with no sales tax, there would have been no sales tax due in either of those instances. So if you took an item you first acquired under any of these circumstances and susequently sent it to the PWCC vault in Oregon, and then some indefinite time later on decided to take your item back out of the vault to take home with you, that subsequent removal of the item should not be a sales taxable event. You had already paid whatever sales tax was originally due at the time you bought the item, so moving it in and of the vault won't create a Sales Taxable event for the owner.

Now in the case of scenario #2, the item you acquired was sent straight to your vault account in Oregon. And since Oregon has no state sales tax, you shouldn't have been charged or paid any sales tax on that item's purchase. Remember, when you purchase something online or remotely, the state sales tax is charged based on where the item is actually shipped to and supposedly going to be used, stored or kept. So if you originally had the acquired item shipped to Oregon and the vault, no sales tax was due, and technically you should be able to later on take that item out of your vault and go wherever you want with it without triggering a Sales Taxable event.

Here's the "but" though. Remember that sales tax is charged based on where an item is delivered and then supposedly stored, kept or used. So as long as someone has their acquisitions initially sent to, and subsequently kept in the vault in Oregon, they are fine and have no sales tax issues. But what if you have someone who opened a vault account specificallty to cheat the state they live in out of sales tax that rightfully was due them. This could fairly easily be done by having everything you acquire sent to the Oregon vault first, and then after some period of time always keep having everything sent to your home. This would be a blatant abuse of the rules as it was clearly never the intention to store, keep or use the items in Oregon. If the state the abuser lived in ever found out what they were doing, I think they could easily go after them and win.

The thing is though, each state has their own unique sales and use tax law so what one state might say or do, another may not. Also, how would a state even find out about such an abuser? They don't really have the staff and resources to investigate things like this, and even if they did, they may still pass on doing anything if they feel the potential claim isn't worth the time and expense to pursue the case. Also I gave you the clearly easy, slam dunk example of an intentional sales tax scofflaw. What about someone that leaves some things in the vault for say a couple years before deciding to take some, not all, items out and have them sent to his home. Or to be very relevant, because of all the issues going on right now, say someone decides to get all their things out of the PWCC vault for very real concerns and other valid business/investment reasons. They clearly did not do that to get around paying sales tax, but how would a particular state they lived in view that and could they decide to possibly go after them for it, if they ever even could find out about it to begin with?

To my knowledge, no state has a specific time frame threshhold in its sales and use tax laws definitively stating that if you had left an item for at least some minimum, specific period of time in a vault like PWCC's before taking it out to bring home with you, that you would automatically be exempt from that item possibly being looked at for sales tax due your home state. If ever questioned on something like that, I'd try and show the sales tax auditors the activity and purpose of item movements in and out of the vault to hopefully demonstrate there was no purposeful intent to evade paying sales taxes, and then cross my fingers they accept the argument.

How a particular state would ever find out about such vault movements to begin with is beyond me. So if I was advising someone that was not blatantly using the vault to just cheat and get around paying sales taxes, I'd tell them to go ahead and move their items out of the vault, and retain all pertinent documents and records of vault movements and activity from when they originally opened their account in case they ever had to present it as evidence to prove the point that they did not use the vault to cheat on sales taxes. Of course the best advice is to consult your own tax adviser and possibly have them look into the sales and use tax laws for the specific state you are in, and also review the specific item movements and activity in your vault account to see if their are any additional issues or questions that may stick out.

There is one sure fire way to make sure you'd have no sales tax issues if you did decide to remove your scenario #2 items from PWCC's vault. And this is no plug or endorsement, but if you simply have everything transferred over to Goldin's vault, they also are in a state with no sales tax either I believe. Just a thought. Good luck.

[Snowman]

I was told by someone in the finance department at PWCC that they are required to charge me sales tax in order to have any cards in my vault shipped to me for all items that were purchased on ebay and shipped directly to my vault since I live in California. Note that this does not apply for any cards that you submitted to the vault yourself. Only to those transactions where sales tax was not paid as a result of them being in Oregon. You can avoid having to pay the sales tax though if you have a resale certificate on file with them.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Snowman

No, it's not a taxable event unless you sell it. At least not with respect to income tax. However, if you purchased items on ebay and had them shipped directly to your PWCC vault, which allowed you to avoid paying sales tax on those transactions since they are located in Oregon, then you will have to pay any applicable sales taxes that you previously avoided when they ship those cards back to you unless you have a resale certificate on file with PWCC.

The idea of their vault is that they want you to leave everthing there in Oregon. That way they figure when you do go to sell, they've got the consignment already. And by leaving all the items in the vault, there is no sales tax issue.

And regarding the resale sales tax exemption certificate, giving one to PWCC doesn't do anything in regards to sales taxes you might otherwise end up owing to the state you live in. You give those exemption certificates to the party you are actually buying from so they don't charge you sales tax. PWCC is merely holding your items for you and has nothing to do with sales tax. Plus, if you used the PWCC address in Oregon to have purchased items shipped directly to your vault, the seller would already know you're in a sales tax free state and not charge sales tax to begin with. You actually wouldn't need to give a sales tax exemption certificate to anyone in that case.

Just saw your post in regards to CA. That must be some special deal they had to cut in order for CA to not come after them for potentially helping people cheat them on sales tax. I know CA taxes are absurd, but this is over the top for even them. So if what PWCC says is true for items shipped to Oregon, what about someone who has a house in Oregon, which they sell and then move to CA with all their furnishings and belongings that they originally bought while in Oregon, and paid no sales tax on. I don't believe CA can come in and then try to charge you CA sales tax on items you originally bought to use in a different state. I'm going to research this some in case PWCC did make some deals with other states besides just CA. That is definitely not how it should working in most every state, and also why i said to check further into each specific state's sales and use tax laws for possible quirks like this. Interesting to say the least.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

From the new PWCC FAQ apologies if duplicate post. As I say presented without comment.

Shill bidding is a bid placed without the intention to honor it - regardless of who placed the bid. As outlined in our Marketplace Tenets PWCC has clear rules that no one may place a bid unless that bid is intended to win the item - not consignors, friends of consigners, people who own other versions of the card, etc. PWCC has never engaged in nor condoned the practice of shill bidding or manipulating the card market. PWCC is proud of our work to ensure a trusted marketplace and unequivocally deny eBay's claims regarding shill bidding.

PWCC prides itself on creating a culture of integrity and trust. We understand its importance to our company, the industry, and collectors.

Comment:

[Peter_Spaeth]

A rather remarkable comment from a guy who, if nothing else, has been an outlet for decades for Gary M.

[Exhibitman]

Guys, before you use some dodgy tax evading mechanism, PLEASE consult someone competent in your state. Taxable events are not limited to transfer of possession; they also include transfer of title. For example, California Revenue & Taxation Code section 6010 defines "Purchase" as including either transfer of title or transfer of possession.

The fact that eBay doesn't collect the tax on an item shipped to OR does not mean you do not owe use tax on the item in your state. You received title to it, so odds are that your state considers you to have purchased it.

My uncle was a tax attorney. His advice to me was just pay the taxes and save yourself the headaches.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I'm moving to NH. Live Free and all that.

[Bobbycee]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I'm moving to NH. Live Free and all that.

No Peter, it's better than that in NH:
"Live Free or Die"

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Guys, before you use some dodgy tax evading mechanism, PLEASE consult someone competent in your state. Taxable events are not limited to transfer of possession; they also include transfer of title. For example, California Revenue & Taxation Code section 6010 defines "Purchase" as including either transfer of title or transfer of possession.

The fact that eBay doesn't collect the tax on an item shipped to OR does not mean you do not owe use tax on the item in your state. You received title to it, so odds are that your state considers you to have purchased it.

My uncle was a tax attorney. His advice to me was just pay the taxes and save yourself the headaches.

Adam, I said the same thing to check with their own tax advisors AND to be sure to check the specific sales tax rules for whatever state they are in. I certainly do not know everything about every state's laws, and all the constant tax law changes can drive anyone crazy. I got your CA point about the transfer of title and transfer of possession, but based on what Snowman heard from PWCC, there wouldn't be any CA sales or use tax due unless he took possession back in CA of cards he had won off Ebay, that went straight into the vault. So I wonder if the same thing would be true for something he won from an auction house (not Ebay) that also got sent right to the vault with no sales tax charged? If not, then it sounds like Ebay and/or PWCC had to cut some special deal with CA. Now Ebay cutting a deal with all the states to collect and remit sales tax on behalf of all their sellers I get. But PWCC suddenly having to possibly withhold and remit sales tax to CA on something they are just holding in a vault for a customer doesn't make any sense, unless it is something they had to agree to with CA in trying to get themselves set up tax-wise with all the states in advance of launching their new sales platform and operations. Now I'm even more curious as to what people using their vault actually signed up for and agreed to. Very odd if you ask me.

[Exhibitman]

Here's how grotesque and blatant it was:



These are three alleged sales of Floyd Mayweather's RC. The exact same serial #'d card. Not only are the prices vastly different, and all far above actual sales contemporaneous to them, note the offering dates: every two months like clockwork.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by BobC

Adam, I said the same thing to check with their own tax advisors AND to be sure to check the specific sales tax rules for whatever state they are in. I certainly do not know everything about every state's laws, and all the constant tax law changes can drive anyone crazy. I got your CA point about the transfer of title and transfer of possession, but based on what Snowman heard from PWCC, there wouldn't be any CA sales or use tax due unless he took possession back in CA of cards he had won off Ebay, that went straight into the vault. So I wonder if the same thing would be true for something he won from an auction house (not Ebay) that also got sent right to the vault with no sales tax charged? If not, then it sounds like Ebay and/or PWCC had to cut some special deal with CA. Now Ebay cutting a deal with all the states to collect and remit sales tax on behalf of all their sellers I get. But PWCC suddenly having to possibly withhold and remit sales tax to CA on something they are just holding in a vault for a customer doesn't make any sense, unless it is something they had to agree to with CA in trying to get themselves set up tax-wise with all the states in advance of launching their new sales platform and operations. Now I'm even more curious as to what people using their vault actually signed up for and agreed to. Very odd if you ask me.

The duty to remit isn't theirs, it is yours under the use tax rules.

I really would not trust anything someone at PWCC tells me about my tax obligations. Not only do they have no expertise and no duty to me to advise me accurately, they also have a huge disincentive to tell me the truth: money. What are they going to say, "yeah, you owe taxes even if you have the cards sent here, just eBay won't collect them, but if you ever get audited you will get nailed"? If they said that no one would use their dumbass service.

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Here's how grotesque and blatant it was:



These are three alleged sales of Floyd Mayweather's RC. The exact same serial #'d card. Not only are the prices vastly different, and all far above actual sales contemporaneous to them, note the offering dates: every two months like clockwork.

Wow Awful.... Great Work.

One should ask which sale was real? I say none of them were real. Check their new platform to see if it shows up.

Hucksters

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

The duty to remit isn't theirs, it is yours under the use tax rules.

I really would not trust anything someone at PWCC tells me about my tax obligations. Not only do they have no expertise and no duty to me to advise me accurately, they also have a huge disincentive to tell me the truth: money. What are they going to say, "yeah, you owe taxes even if you have the cards sent here, just eBay won't collect them, but if you ever get audited you will get nailed"? If they said that no one would use their dumbass service.

After I ask PWCC for tax advice, I will ask them to point me to all their altered cards and for advice on how high to bid. And for advice on which assets to invest in.

[Frankish]

It's a shame that PWCC's own ebay auction business and other alleged behavior is conflated with the vault business. Personally, I think the vault was a great idea. The prices were (for me) reasonable and made holding mid and high end graded cards I was interested in selling at some point easy. The fees to sell through them and the absolute lack of hassle involved was unparalleled. If someone offered that service independently, I would be all over it.

Even the PWCC additional ratings for eye appeal and whatnot were, I think, a good innovation. And, if I'm honest, I tend to agree that most of their indicated cards were in fact very nice for the grade (if not under graded). That only speaks to false positives though. I have no idea how many potentially under-graded cards they passed over.

Anyway, I can't speak to or defend their own auction behavior or potential sales tax issues (it's not something I was ever involved with nor am I an expert in those areas by any stretch). But I do think the vault and the way it operated with ebay was a terrific idea, well-implemented and a good value for customers like me. It's a shame to lose that.

[Frankish]

Also, well said Howard. For the most part collectible and fine arts are incredibly inefficient markets. The relatively low volumes of money and subjectivity of underlying assets has largely kept professional money away. Although in the last couple of years I have seen (relatively) small financial fish dipping into the card collecting market. Larger fish have been nibbling at the infrastructure, but not in way (so far) that makes the market much more efficient.

Originally Posted by hcv123

It is also (SHAMELESS PLUG COMING) why part of my business is private consignment sales - it offers true price protection with integrity! If my consignor doesn't like an offer, it doesn't "sell to the highest bidder" - we wait for someone willing to pay more.

Also, a very happy consignor here. In fact, now that the PWCC vault no longer offers the value proposition I bought into, I'll probably be sending Howard a lot more cards....

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Here's how grotesque and blatant it was:



These are three alleged sales of Floyd Mayweather's RC. The exact same serial #'d card. Not only are the prices vastly different, and all far above actual sales contemporaneous to them, note the offering dates: every two months like clockwork.

I don't see anything fishy at all about these sales. The selling prices are in line with what I would expect to see given the dates. In Feb, the market was twice as high as it is now. That 11k price lines up perfectly with the peak of the market. Someone bought in at the wrong time, then panicked and sold when the market crashed. And the sale dates line up perfectly with PWCC's monthly auctions. These look like normal sales to me.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I don't see anything fishy at all about these sales. The selling prices are in line with what I would expect to see given the dates. In Feb, the market was twice as high as it is now. That 11k price lines up perfectly with the peak of the market. Someone bought in at the wrong time, then panicked and sold when the market crashed. And the sale dates line up perfectly with PWCC's monthly auctions. These look like normal sales to me.

It's too bad you weren't around in 2016, you would have been defending all the BS that people were defending back then and they turned out to be completely wrong.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Frankish

It's a shame that PWCC's own ebay auction business and other alleged behavior is conflated with the vault business. Personally, I think the vault was a great idea. The prices were (for me) reasonable and made holding mid and high end graded cards I was interested in selling at some point easy. The fees to sell through them and the absolute lack of hassle involved was unparalleled. If someone offered that service independently, I would be all over it.

Even the PWCC additional ratings for eye appeal and whatnot were, I think, a good innovation. And, if I'm honest, I tend to agree that most of their indicated cards were in fact very nice for the grade (if not under graded). That only speaks to false positives though. I have no idea how many potentially under-graded cards they passed over.

Anyway, I can't speak to or defend their own auction behavior or potential sales tax issues (it's not something I was ever involved with nor am I an expert in those areas by any stretch). But I do think the vault and the way it operated with ebay was a terrific idea, well-implemented and a good value for customers like me. It's a shame to lose that.

Regarding the part in bold, while perhaps an "innovation", I would hardly call it a good one. BODA conclusively revealed that a huge percentage of those "nice for the grade" cards were "Moser Specials". And of those that were not linked to Moser, many were tainted by other known card doctors.

Any informed collector could see that those stickers served the same purpose as many well-known traffic signs, like "Stop", "Proceed with Caution", "Detour" or "Do Not Enter". Or perhaps my favorite... "Construction Zone".

Perhaps the use (or misuse) of those stickers should be classified as "Card Trafficking".

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I don't see anything fishy at all about these sales. The selling prices are in line with what I would expect to see given the dates. In Feb, the market was twice as high as it is now. That 11k price lines up perfectly with the peak of the market. Someone bought in at the wrong time, then panicked and sold when the market crashed. And the sale dates line up perfectly with PWCC's monthly auctions. These look like normal sales to me.

Come on…..please. You’d have to be a complete idiot with cards of this kind of money if you’re doing this taking loss after loss of this magnitude in such short periods of time. I can’t think of many people that stupid to immediately sell when they could hold it and wait it out… I’m sorry nah I don’t buy it for one second.

[5-Tool Player]

PWCC = sinking ship

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by perezfan

Regarding the part in bold, while perhaps an "innovation", I would hardly call it a good one. BODA conclusively revealed that a huge percentage of those "nice for the grade" cards were "Moser Specials". And of those that were not linked to Moser, many were tainted by other known card doctors.

Any informed collector could see that those stickers served the same purpose as many well-known traffic signs, like "Stop", "Proceed with Caution", "Detour" or "Do Not Enter". Or perhaps my favorite... "Construction Zone".

Perhaps the use (or misuse) of those stickers should be classified as "Card Trafficking".

People just don't get it. It's remarkable to me that people are STILL supporting him, and excusing him, and explaining away obvious BS, and so forth. WTF

Imagine if he gets indicted.

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

People just don't get it. It's remarkable to me that people are STILL supporting him, and excusing him, and explaining away obvious BS, and so forth. WTF

Imagine if he gets indicted.

Maybe they will show up at sentencing as character witnesses.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

The duty to remit isn't theirs, it is yours under the use tax rules.

I really would not trust anything someone at PWCC tells me about my tax obligations. Not only do they have no expertise and no duty to me to advise me accurately, they also have a huge disincentive to tell me the truth: money. What are they going to say, "yeah, you owe taxes even if you have the cards sent here, just eBay won't collect them, but if you ever get audited you will get nailed"? If they said that no one would use their dumbass service.

I know, that's why I was saying it didn't make any sense. And I was thinking like you, just didn't say it out loud. LOL

For the heck of it, I did do a little quick research to see if I could find anything related to owning/using an asset outside of CA before bringing into the state that would specifically exempt it from being subject to CA sales and use tax. I didn't find anything specific in regards to cards or any other personal property, and didn't really expect to. But did get lucky on CA's own site and found that if you purchase and use a motor vehicle outside of CA for at least 12 months and then bring it into CA, you owe no sales or use tax on the vehicle. Even if you originally bought it in Oregon where you paid no sales tax at all. Gives me some faith that if you purchased and kept something like baseball cards in a vault outside of CA for at least a year or two before you then tried to bring them into CA, they may no longer be subject to CA sales or use tax either. I'll have to do some more digging.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

I know, that's why I was saying it didn't make any sense. And I was thinking like you, just didn't say it out loud. LOL

For the heck of it, I did do a little quick research to see if I could find anything related to owning/using an asset outside of CA before bringing into the state that would specifically exempt it from being subject to CA sales and use tax. I didn't find anything specific in regards to cards or any other personal property, and didn't really expect to. But did get lucky on CA's own site and found that if you purchase and use a motor vehicle outside of CA for at least 12 months and then bring it into CA, you owe no sales or use tax on the vehicle. Even if you originally bought it in Oregon where you paid no sales tax at all. Gives me some faith that if you purchased and kept something like baseball cards in a vault outside of CA for at least a year or two before you then tried to bring them into CA, they may no longer be subject to CA sales or use tax either. I'll have to do some more digging.

What does it mean to USE the vehicle elsewhere, maybe that's the key to why you don't owe use tax because you already used it. You said purchase AND use. Are you using a card sitting in a vault?

[Frankish]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

People just don't get it. It's remarkable to me that people are STILL supporting him, and excusing him, and explaining away obvious BS, and so forth. WTF

Imagine if he gets indicted.

I guess we can't all be as smart as you.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Frankish

I guess we can't all be as smart as you.

It has nothing to do with me. Just paying attention to the facts.

[Frankish]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

It has nothing to do with me. Just paying attention to the facts.

Like I said, wish we were all so intelligent. To see the signal for the noise. To be able to clearly delineate in black and white the entirety of an enterprise. I am truly impressed.

[MattyC]

If someone uses an auction house or consignment service to create a fake sale, and they complete the transaction so as to get the data point in the sales record, who is at fault— the person consigning and buying their card, or the company that lists the card and processes the transaction?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

What does it mean to USE the vehicle elsewhere, maybe that's the key to why you don't owe use tax because you already used it. You said purchase AND use. Are you using a card sitting in a vault?

I know that may sound dumb, but that is what it says. Think of it this way, you live in CA, and have a second/vacation home somewhere in Oregon. And when you stay there with family you end up buying an extra car from an Oregon dealer and just leave it there at the Oregon house should someone staying there need to use it. And then one day you just decide to sell the Oregon house and simply bring the Oregon vehicle back to CA with you. If you had owned that Oregon car for at least 12 months before bringing it back to CA, you would owe no use tax on the car to CA. But lets say you only owned it for 9 months before bringing it back, you would owe CA the full use tax on whatever you originally paid for the vehicle, because you had bought it in Oregon and paid no sales tax on it it to start with. Had you bought and used the vehicle in a state other than Oregon, where you did pay a sales tax on it when you bought it, you would still owe CA use tax on it if you brought it back to CA before owning it at least 12 months. And the CA use tax would still be based on the original purchase price of the vehicle, except now you would reduce the use tax you owe CA dollar for dollar by the amount of sales tax you originally paid to the state you bought the car in.

As for "using" a card you keep in the vault, you could say it is being held and used as potential inventory for an upcoming sale or something like that. The definition can likely be somewhat loose. Like maybe you just parked the car when you first got it, and then never drove it again till you got it back to CA. During that entire time it had still been available for use, right?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by MattyC

If someone uses an auction house or consignment service to create a fake sale, and they complete the transaction so as to get the data point in the sales record, who is at fault— the person consigning and buying their card, or the company that lists the card and processes the transaction?

Clearly the person consigning/buying the card, but did the company listing the card and processing the transaction know what the consigner/buyer was doing or reasonably should have known? If a no to that question, then no to the company really being at fault, IMO.

[Bored5000]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I don't see anything fishy at all about these sales. The selling prices are in line with what I would expect to see given the dates. In Feb, the market was twice as high as it is now. That 11k price lines up perfectly with the peak of the market. Someone bought in at the wrong time, then panicked and sold when the market crashed. And the sale dates line up perfectly with PWCC's monthly auctions. These look like normal sales to me.

Yikes. That take seems almost impossible to believe. After everything that has come out regarding PWCC being a clearinghouse for trimmed cards, telling a bidder to take the high bid because he will not win the auction and now the proof of shill bidding, there are still people out there defending PWCC and arguing there is nothing to see?

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

It's too bad you weren't around in 2016, you would have been defending all the BS that people were defending back then and they turned out to be completely wrong.

I'm not saying that PWCC is innocent of all these accusations against them. And frankly, I find the owner to be very off-putting. All I'm saying here is that from a data abnormality perspective, there is nothing fishy about those 3 sales.

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I'm not saying that PWCC is innocent of all these accusations against them. And frankly, I find the owner to be very off-putting. All I'm saying here is that from a data abnormality perspective, there is nothing fishy about those 3 sales.

That's because it flies in the face of how most people act. The typical buyer gets absolutely married to their purchase price (even though that shouldn't have anything to do with any future decision about if/when sell, except for tax purposes).

And the biggest psychological basis of that marriage is not taking a loss. Especially a noticeable one in a short period of time. It's actually kinda fascinating, how if something is likely going from $40 to $1, the person who paid 30 for it is happy to sell (while the one who paid 60 will probably hold on w/ blind hope). Even though all that matters at that point is what will happen in the future. Anyway, I digress....

This is why I find those sales suspect. Sure it's highly circumstantial evidence, but it's hard to believe that two consecutive people immediately dumped something that they just bought in the next available auction. It's not really a spot where a panic from the market dropping dictates someone's frame of mind as much.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Here's how grotesque and blatant it was:



These are three alleged sales of Floyd Mayweather's RC. The exact same serial #'d card. Not only are the prices vastly different, and all far above actual sales contemporaneous to them, note the offering dates: every two months like clockwork.

I just looked into this further since I'm basically being called an idiot for my statement regarding these not looking fishy at all from a data perspective.

You state that these sales are "all far above actual sales contemporaneous to them". This is not true. These sales are all very much in line with the other sales for this card. I looked up all sales of this card in any grade going back to November 2020 on both Terapeak and PWCC's Market Research Tool. The list below is comprehensive. Every sale in this dataset lines up with market expectations. Also worth noting is that the middle sale of the 3 in your post above is absent in both eBay's Terapeak research tool and PWCC's research tool, which generally implies that it was not paid for. Perhaps that listing was shill bid by the person who previously bought it for 11k? Who knows. But it makes perfect sense for it to be listed again if whoever bought it did not pay for it.

Note the sale of another PSA 9 by some random ebay seller on June 5th, just 3 weeks before the most recent sale of the 3 you posted. It sold for $5911 at auction, but there were at least FOUR unique bidders all of whom placed a bid north of $5k in that auction. The one you say was "far above actual sales contemporarenous" to this one sold just 3 weeks later in the same PSA 9 grade (but with an older style slab) for $4861.90 at auction with PWCC.

Here are the sales of this card. All of these line up perfectly with expectations given the market trends we've seen throughout 2021.

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I just looked into this further since I'm basically being called an idiot for my statement regarding these not looking fishy at all from a data perspective.

You state that these sales are "all far above actual sales contemporaneous to them". This is not true. These sales are all very much in line with the other sales for this card. I looked up all sales of this card in any grade going back to November 2020 on both Terapeak and PWCC's Market Research Tool. The list below is comprehensive. Every sale in this dataset lines up with market expectations. Also worth noting is that the middle sale of the 3 in your post above is absent in both eBay's Terapeak research tool and PWCC's research tool, which generally implies that it was not paid for. Perhaps that listing was shill bid by the person who previously bought it for 11k? Who knows. But it makes perfect sense for it to be listed again if whoever bought it did not pay for it.

Note the sale of another PSA 9 by some random ebay seller on June 5th, just 3 weeks before the most recent sale of the 3 you posted. It sold for $5911 at auction, but there were at least FOUR unique bidders all of whom placed a bid north of $5k in that auction. The one you say was "far above actual sales contemporarenous" to this one sold just 3 weeks later in the same PSA 9 grade (but with an older style slab) for $4861.90 at auction with PWCC.

Here are the sales of this card. All of these line up perfectly with expectations given the market trends we've seen throughout 2021.

From the data perspective I’m not arguing with you However it’s not the goal of somebody who owns this card to continue to lose money of this magnitude in a such short period of time that’s what doesn’t make sense to me it just doesn’t.

I’m sorry you can run the current market date numbers for that time however you want it just doesn’t make sense for someone to buy that card selling it so quickly just to lose and lose and lose month after month. I’m sorry they got greedy plain and simple. They pushed the issues doubled down trying to get more more and more, it backfired and bit them in the ass, That’s how I see it.

Yeah that’s my take I’m not calling you an idiot I think you’re actually very intelligent. However I don’t buy this in any way shape or form for this particular card by this particular Seller in this particular time frame I’m being very specific.

[maniac_73]

So you mean the random explosion in prices for mass produced tennis cards and obscure professional wrestling cards isn't legit? Once again, Im shocked

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by maniac_73

So you mean the random explosion in prices for mass produced tennis cards and obscure professional wrestling cards isn't legit? Once again, Im shocked

[Oscar_Stanage]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I just looked into this further since I'm basically being called an idiot for my statement regarding these not looking fishy at all from a data perspective.

You state that these sales are "all far above actual sales contemporaneous to them". This is not true. These sales are all very much in line with the other sales for this card. I looked up all sales of this card in any grade going back to November 2020 on both Terapeak and PWCC's Market Research Tool. The list below is comprehensive. Every sale in this dataset lines up with market expectations. Also worth noting is that the middle sale of the 3 in your post above is absent in both eBay's Terapeak research tool and PWCC's research tool, which generally implies that it was not paid for. Perhaps that listing was shill bid by the person who previously bought it for 11k? Who knows. But it makes perfect sense for it to be listed again if whoever bought it did not pay for it.

Note the sale of another PSA 9 by some random ebay seller on June 5th, just 3 weeks before the most recent sale of the 3 you posted. It sold for $5911 at auction, but there were at least FOUR unique bidders all of whom placed a bid north of $5k in that auction. The one you say was "far above actual sales contemporarenous" to this one sold just 3 weeks later in the same PSA 9 grade (but with an older style slab) for $4861.90 at auction with PWCC.

Here are the sales of this card. All of these line up perfectly with expectations given the market trends we've seen throughout 2021.

I agree with you. many cards followed the pattern of peaking in Feb/March and then dropping by 50% in June.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Wid_Conroy

I agree with you. many cards followed the pattern of peaking in Feb/March and then dropping by 50% in June.

Because they were shilled? What makes more sense? Someone buys a card and sells it for half a few months later then the second buyer sells it for 20% less. Or the first auction is shilled and never paid for, the second auction is shilled and never paid for and then the third auction results in a sale (or not). The later is what happened in 2016, why wouldn't it be the same in 2021?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by rats60

Because they were shilled? What makes more sense? Someone buys a card and sells it for half a few months later then the second buyer sells it for 20% less. Or the first auction is shilled and never paid for, the second auction is shilled and never paid for and then the third auction results in a sale (or not). The later is what happened in 2016, why wouldn't it be the same in 2021?

The alleged sellers realized even less than that after fees if those sales are real.
Yeah, real likely.
But defenders will defend, that's what they did then, that's what they do now.

Imagine if he gets indicted, what will they say then?