odd bid,lost / bid,won eBay experience

[Empty77]

So what do you make of this odd bidding experience I’ve had with one of the big eBay sellers:?

A few months ago I was bidding on a mostly unremarkable late-60s Topps team card (and not a world series winner, just a regular ol’ team card), though high end and relatively low pop; over the past decade always sold in the $200-300 range, though with the most recent sale of $440 in 2016. I estimated it could perhaps go for $five something this time at most, and because I wanted it and didn’t want to mess around, I put out a bid of $seven something in the waning seconds, and even if it did take that full amount it wouldn’t have bothered me. But that’s not what happened…

I was instantly outbid by the minimum of $10 or whatever, with no time left to respond since I was so surprised. Oh well, I thought, a little odd someone wanted that relatively non-descript item more than me today…

Then, exactly 3 months later, and I mean exactly on the 91st day after the sale, meaning just beyond the reach of eBay’s “completed” sale search, the exact same card lists again via the same prominent seller.

Because it seemed weird I was a little hesitant, but ultimately handled it the same way and won it this time, for $five something (not to brag too much, but I am quite good at forecasting). But it doesn’t answer the question of what’s going on that first time. Was that not a real sale?? How could it be? What knucklehead would “overbid” on an item like that if they weren’t serious about wanting it and instead turn it immediately back over to relist? Do they think it’s 2016 all over again, or is that some sort of funny business I don’t quite understand, fishing somehow for max sale values?

[hcv123]

There are guys on the board who are detail oriented enough to pick these kinds of scenarios apart and offer educated opinions on what happened. Me - not so much. I would provide more detail (ebay lot #) At first read - it certainly sounds like you got shilled - with the seller/shiller (possibly not the company if it is one who accepts ebay consignments) being more optimistic than you were. I always snipe ebay auctions and never bid more than I am comfortable paying - that way I'm comfortable regardless of what shilling is or isn't happening although I certainly hate the fact that shilling seems to be so prevalent ( I know I was shilled in a couple of Mastro auctions years ago).

[LuckyLarry]

$700 something for a late ‘60s Topps team card?
Larry

[Fuddjcal]

Looks like you have the answer. You were out bid by Curt Shilling.

[Empty77]

Originally Posted by LuckyLarry

$700 something for a late ‘60s Topps team card?
Larry

Hey, no judging, I'm well aware of (most of) my flaws, and lack of patience sometimes is high up there!

The key take away is that I got it for $560, and not above the $790 that the presumably shill bidder tagged it with the first go around...

[Chicosbailbonds]

Originally Posted by Empty77

Hey, no judging, I'm well aware of (most of) my flaws, and lack of patience sometimes is high up there!

The key take away is that I got it for $560, and not above the $790 that the presumably shill bidder tagged it with the first go around...

You always want to snipe these. There are plenty of free sniping programs out there, saved me a lot of money. I use Myibidder.

[Yastrzemski Sports]

Originally Posted by LuckyLarry

$700 something for a late ‘60s Topps team card?
Larry

Very few cards it could be. You figure 1966 or 1967 hi. There aren’t any in that range in 1966. But there is a 1967 Pirates Team Card that sold for 563 just a couple of days ago.

[ALBB]

Wait What..a 67T Pirates team card for that much ..card # 492 ?

[swarmee]

https://www.psacard.com/auctionprice...ues/187278#g=9

PSA 9 condition.

[Empty77]

Originally Posted by swarmee

https://www.psacard.com/auctionprice...ues/187278#g=9

PSA 9 condition.

Correct. (I'm a player rather than set collector, so to me this counts as a Clemente card, and with a total list of ~250 career-era items, that makes allowance for some extravagances that perhaps working simultaneously on several 600 card company sets wouldn't allow, if that were my scenario instead...).

As your link shows, the last publically recorded and presumably real sale was 2016 for $460, so my win at $560 the other day seems within a perfectly reasonable margin to me, though I can envision a card like that equally going for $360 instead which would also seem right. What did not seem right was the $800 "sale" from January, and I guess the immediate relist basically proves that.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Fuddjcal

You were out bid by Curt Shilling.

But seriously, your best bet is to bid what you want to pay and not worry about the rest of it.

[JollyElm]

Too bad we don't have a searchable database here to list cards like this one, cards that are statistical anomalies and much 'rarer' (or having low pops?) than they should ever be, perhaps due to centering and/or other factors. It'd be great digging through your stuff and running across a beautiful common that you never gave a second look to, but now realize you could have something pretty great!!

[Empty77]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Too bad we don't have a searchable database here to list cards like this one, cards that are statistical anomalies and much 'rarer' (or having low pops?) than they should ever be, perhaps due to centering and/or other factors. It'd be great digging through your stuff and running across a beautiful common that you never gave a second look to, but now realize you could have something pretty great!!

So that was an interesting enough thought for me that I bothered to check this one out in detail: ~27k PSA 9s graded for the set, and ~610 items means an avg of 44 PSA 9s per item. I hypothesized maybe all the team cards had lower than avg 9 representation, perhaps out of low interest among collectors compared to player cards... turns out that's not the case:

The team cards avg 46 9s apiece, so spot on with the rest of the set (not a meaningful statistical difference) except one, you guessed it, that Pirates card is only a pop 15 for some reason, so only a third the avg quantity available (the next lowest has 27, and all the rest are 30 and well over). Also interesting is that there is only 1 GEM Pirates card whereas the team cards as a whole avg 3.33, so again the Pirate card has only a third the quantity available on the market. [To be clear, a number of other team cards only have 1 GEM also (they are difficult to achieve after all), but a bunch of them do have 6-7 GEMs, which does seem a meaningful difference.]

That said, although it is romantic to think there are many undiscovered mint cards in collector hoards out there, somehow I doubt things much work out that way. It is a mystery to me how cards survive that long maintaining that level of condition, but when it happens I wonder if for the most part those items are expressly not coming from the collections of real collectors (that use and handle their cards over the years), but rather from disinterested persons that hadn't touched them and luckily had the forethought to hire a professional to help them sort through once they were rediscovered during a move or upon death.