The shilling is obvious when he has two of the exact same cards up for bids. For example, 1962 Juan Marichal rookie card SGC 7. When one of the 7's is markedly better than the other one, yet the inferior 7 is double what the better example is - that tells me shill bidding is going on.

The shown example to me is a great looking card & should sell for $1200-1250 or that is what i would be willing to pay. Card is not altered because it has huge white borders.
I would have put a snipe at 1250 and if i won great if not then so be it.
I did end up winning a high end card yesterday which i feel sold for the correct price.
I always look to see who the other bidders are in PWCC auctions. If they do not have more then 2-3 retractions i consider them real. If i see others with tons of retractions i stay away, or just put a snipe for what i feel the card is worth to me.
Enjoy this great hobby :)

100% agree.

Ruben - that wasn't you that won the that e121 Ruth that was auctioned off for the 2nd time in 2 months by PWCC, was it?

+1

Set a snipe for what you're willing to pay and you'll always be a happy camper!

I agree. Brent has done an incredible job creating monthly auctions that get more views than my or most board member listings. More viewers , more bids. & strangely I have done MUCH better as a buyer- getting great deals than as a consignor. When there are 100's of T206's listed at .99cent starting price some cards can slip though the cracks-I've caught some. Other cards lke a Johnson portrait most likely won't slip through.That being said I respect Brent and his auction. I believe he is earning good money on his auctions and has integrity and would
no more intentionally Shill an auction than any of us would.

My guess is that he outgunned me on the E103 Wagner from PWCC. :(

Like I noted earlier, I won this card there last night at a great price (unless I'm missing something). Has happened before when, as others suggest, you stick with a fair or even "bargain" top bid and stick with it. http://www.net54baseball.com/attachm...1&d=1399307655

It sounds like the blind guys in this thread are buying cards from each other, but paying a consignment fee to do so. You should introduce yourselves to one another and save some bucks.

I don't know Scott ...when I got a beautiful T206 graded SGC 7.5 for $ 369 in one of his auctions in the fall I was happy. If you have T206's graded like that with no issues & a price like that please let me know.

Reminds me of some lines from an old favorite song


"Comes a time when the blind man takes your hand
Says, "Don't you see?
Gotta make it somehow on the dreams you still believe
Don't give it up,"
from the Grateful Dead

Paul C

The problem is that there are very few true auctions that start at 99 cents on ebay anymore, especially for high end stuff like what PWCC often sells. I think as a buyer, you just need to examine the auction bidding to see if anything strange is going on, decide on a fair price if you believe for the card if you still want to bid, and then go on from there.

The ironic thing about selling on the board is this. Not all the time, but sometimes, I will have a high profile, high demand card (like a Sandy Koufax/Roberto Clemente rookie card). I have a low price on Net54 but still get lowball offers. When I put the card on Ebay, I obviously get more than what I was asking for on Net54. Maybe the buyers here are too finnicky?

I know it's been said before, but does it not make you sick to think that the amount you think a card is worth has potentially been poisoned by previously shilled auction results? It makes me want to throw up.

Maybe.....Everyone wants a GREAT deal and a lot of folks think that in a straight buy (as is on the BST) they are not getting a steal? That being said I have bought and sold a fair amount on the BST and it's all been fine. Some things I have listed, didn't sell. Not a big deal. I was out the few minutes it took me to list there.... I have watched lizards mating on a fence and wasted more time :).

Exactly...to the point that I'd guess lots of cards values are artificially inflated.

Interesting thought!

I've sold and auctioned here at B/S/T. I've had people buy at my asking price and stuff that went unsold. I've mostly sold lesser priced odds and ends. It's got a smaller and closed to members audience, so you won't always match a product to a collector, but it's a decent market place. As I mostly follow the Pre-War discussions, I don't know how many members are the types looking for Clemente and Koufax rookies.

Even if you like eBay, it's good to have multiple places to sell. Depending on just one place can backfire in the long run. And B/S/T is another place to sell. I would imagine there would be little stuff I'd sell here that might sit around forever in the sea that is eBay.

I agree with the earlier comment that, what some people consider market price, involves shilling. They often realize this when they turn to sell. This is why it's important for collectors to sell once in a while-- to have a feel for what the market is really like and what selling really involves. Also, people who go strictly by others' sales prices, tend to naturally focus on the highest (record) prices and get a distorted view of value due to that. It's human nature. If a non-selling card sells elsewhere for $200, $250 and $300 in honest auctions, a collector might consciously or nonconsciously think "It's sold as high as $300. My card is worth $300." Real world selling can shake some of the cognitive biases from your head.

One thing I've always recommended is that collectors sell at least one in a while, even if that just means consigning. Keeps them in touch with the real world. And real world pricing isn't what REA or Heritage gets or what VCP lists or what you'd theoretically get by analyzing others auctions. Real world pricing is what you get when you sell, and real world selling is the act of selling. If you don't know what I mean by real world selling, do some selling. As Alfred Hitchcock said, "A movie is real life with the boring parts cut out." Day dream selling is selling without the time, email tag, unreasonable buyers, packaging tape, boredom, standing in line at the post office, unanticipated costs and searching alley dumpsters for right sized cardboard boxes.

Leon...my girlfriend would LOVE to do that!! As long as we were in Cozumel, St Thomas, or somewhere else tropical while we were doing that! :p

Wait a minute, you're saying these tiny cardboard cutouts that we're paying thousands of dollars for may be artificially inflated? No way.

lol!

Or you could actually take a stand and not bid with people whose auctions always seem to have so many questions.

Right, seriously. If the card market ever crashed to pennies, no noncollector would have any sympathy. They would be thinking what were these idiots thinking spending thousands of dollars on pieces of cardboard. At least with art, it is studied in school, and shown in world class museums. Coins and stamps have a country's history. Even comic books can be made into movies that make hundreds of millions of dollars. Baseball movies are lucky to get close to $100 million during their entire run.

Just squeeze a little harder and you'll realize it's your own hand.

Peter, even Jeff (calvindog) has bid and won from PWCC as recently as around a year ago, and don't tell me PWCC was "clean" before this ...

So what? Jeff doesn't dictate right or wrong, does he?

Or you could buy wherever you can find a nice card for a reasonable price. If I eliminated every shady character from my search I would be left buying cards from no one.

If I found it bothersome that any price paid may be artificially inflated (due to a shilled auction in the recent or distant past), to the point where I couldn't get past it, then I would just stop buying cards. We waste hundreds if not thousands on bar tabs, hands of blackjack, bottles of wine at a dinner, and so much other stuff that paying a potentially inflated price on a card to the tune of a few hundo because of a shilled auction in the past just doesn't make my blood boil or stomach turn. If the card is beautiful, smokes other ugly examples, I want it, and can pay a price I can afford, I'm making it happen. Nice and simple. This is just one dude's view, riffing with others, not trying to proselytize.

And that's exactly what criminals like Bill Mastro think when they're engaging in their fraud: 'they want the card anyway, why is shilling it up a problem?' Hell, Bill still thinks that and he's cooperating with the Feds against other criminals in our hobby.

When I looked at your web page I thought to myself...man ...who would offer a T206 SGC 30 common for $49.00 & call me blind for saying PWCC is ok. I am not looking for a fight, but my vision is A.O.K & don't appreciate you calling me blind because I have gotten good deals on PWCC ( and Probstein) & compared to you website....I could see how you are in search of blind buyers.....
PWCC seems down right cheap compared to your listings ....& no shills on your listings....

I respectfully couldn't disagree with this more. So comics are somehow inherently more valuable than cards because they can be made into terrible yet high grossing films? Coins and stamps have a country's history, and cards are part of sports history-- and sports are deeply woven into America's cultural fabric. Art is studied in school, but what makes a Basquiat worth millions and some other brilliant but unhyped artists never makes it big in the art world? There are politics and shadiness at play in the art collecting world, from authentic pieces that an estate doesn't want to dub legit, to the hype that certain influential players can give, which in turn blows up an artists' prices. Look at how attention from the Shafrazis and Gagosians of the art world can affect an artists' prices. And art is the zenith of subjectivity; in contrast a card's rarity, popularity, and the stature of the player depicted are pretty quantifiable, at least relative to justifying why one artist or art work is worth X and another worth Y.

I can't believe what I read in these threads about shilling.

Seriously - do you take the attitude that because you personally can't stop all crime, that crime is okay and we should ignore it, as long as it doesn't affect us personally?

So is the answer, by that logic, to stop collecting? I agree the criminals are out there, that we have to be able to identify and steer around shilled auctions, but one can't let awareness of the fraud paralyze them from enjoyment, or from obtaining the items they love. There has to be a balance within the collector.

No Scott, I'm not saying that at all. But I also don't give up my current life to be a policeman or vigilante by night. If you want to stop collecting because there are shillers out there, go for it. Willingness to bid in unshilled auctions does not mean someone condones shilling. Willingness to buy cards when prices in general may be inflated here and there due to past shilling is also not condoning shilling. If I see it I will report it. If I see it I will abstain. If I have a friend pursuing a card I see is being shilled, I will put him onto it. But I won't let the existence of shilling stop me from collecting, or dominate my mind to the point where I spend more time talking about shilling on a website than I do enjoying cards. It's about balance and enjoyment, and not crossing the line from cautious, educated collector into paralyzed collector/crusader.

I hope nobody believes that!
shilling is wrong and a crime

Matt, I can see where you're coming from for comic books, but baseball cards are just pieces of cardboard. It's like the ultimate non-gold standard currency. There's nothing behind it but pure faith. And they were mass produced. And how about non sports cards like Pokémon cards. People can say it's the same thing, entertainment, sports, etc... Art is very subjective, true, but it's always going to be studied in schools, and always going to be considered a "higher" form of culture than sports. I'm not saying that I would be any of these pieces of art that sell for millions which look like my two year old could have done or even if some Monet is really worth $100+ million. However, those collectibles seem to be more a fabric of society than cards are. If Van Gogh's starting selling for $10, it would be headline news, and people would start thinking it's like another Cultural Revolution in China, which wasn't a good thing. The same reaction wouldn't happen for cards.

I think most people, myself include, believe that shilling is wrong, and is a crime. However, some people are arguing that they will try to find those auctions that they don't believe are shilled and try to bid on those. However, Peter and others, are advocating the higher road, in that they believe that since PWCC may be encouraging shilling or at the minimum not doing anything about it, they should be boycotted for all of their listings even the ones that don't seem to be shilled. I mean if you take this further, you shouldn't buy or sell on ebay at all since ebay isn't doing diddly either, and making it even harder to determine shilling these days by making the ebay usernames who win or bid on auctions even more anonymous than before.

Where did you come up with such logic? From 'avoid known cheats' to 'avoid everyone'? :confused: The balance you speak of is achieved by avoiding dishonest sellers. Many of us do so, and our collections are not bad.

I have not studied PWCC or Probstein's auctions and bidding history, and I have ignored most of the posts that do so, but it's hard to ignore the responses in these discussions that advocate complacency when shilling is discovered.

One could just as easily say a Warhol is merely some canvas and paint. It's all so subjective. I personally don't believe in comparing one realm of collectible to another. Some cards were mass produced, others are in incredibly low supply relative to demand. One cannot underestimate people's love of sport, sports icons, and all the nostalgia as well.

Art being considered "higher" troubles me. To be clear, not saying you are saying that. But for those who would, it's kind of a pretentious, condescending attitude. There is room in a society for for both fine art and for sport. And one could contend sport is far more popular than art in society. I'm not someone who's big into prognostications but I don't see high end art or high end baseball cards becoming worthless in my lifetime.

There is crime on our planet; therefore, I am leaving.

The only way to stop shilling is to pay what you believe a card is worth.

Scott, that logic is just an attempt to address the notion that all or many prices are inflated because of past shilling. And therefore, if one doesn't want to be a victim of shilling, and yet many prices even in unshilled auctions are in effect "retroactively shilled," if you will, then it becomes a slippery slope.

I always think "How big of you to feel it's okay that others are shilled out of money."

It's like with illegally down loaded movies and music where people say it's okay because "it's free publicity" or "that's the way the world is" or "musicians should get their money from concerts." What they really mean is it's okay because it's other people property being stolen. If it was their property being stolen, you can bet they'd be threatening lawsuit or contacting the police.

And then there are the inevitable posters who boast they don't mind being shilled out of $100, "because I know what I'm willing to pay." Whatever. When you aren't shilled, do you flush $100 down the toilet to achieve the same effect? Are you one of those movie mobster characters who burn $10 bills in bars to impress others how little money means to you?

As I've said, "You do realize don't you that the $100 lost due you being shilled is $100 you could have spend towards another card?" Or perhaps I missed the detail that your wife's maiden name is Rockefeller.

My usual guess when a collector says he doesn't mind being shilled because he's knowledgeable about values is he isn't knowledgeable about values. My usual guess is his 'knowledge' is the product of following shilled auctions.

Matt, I think you would understand this because you're a screenwriter. There are some movies that are just pure entertainment. However, there are some movies that attempt to give society something different in the world, to make a point. Sports are just pure entertainment, and collecting cards of sports heroes are just an extension of that. However, some art tries to show the world in a different way, and bring the audience with them. That's why I think it's a different type of collectible.

I agree completely that it's a different type. I would just fall short of calling one "higher" or not. Both thought-provoking films/art and sport have merit in society, IMO, is all I'm saying.

I think there are two distinct issues in this conversation that need to be parsed. There is "participating in a shilled auction," and then there is the notion that "many or all prices are inflated due to shilling." The former is relatively easier to combat on the individual level, by outing shilled auctions, abstaining from them, learning how to spot them and passing that knowledge onto other individuals. But the latter notion is more problematic.

I don't see many here saying they are okay with others getting robbed, or okay with getting robbed themselves. For me at least, I'm talking specifically about the discrete notion of prices being inflated due to past shilling-- and thus if one does not want to be a party to that, it can paralyze a collector.

Sorry Gary. You are correct I did get the E103 Wagner. The image and carity/color was so amazing that I just had to get it. Been looking for one like that for 2 years now.
I guess I'm out of the picture so I hope you will land yours soon :)

I don't agree that shilling is driving up prices in all auctions, and I have avoided such discussions. But if that could be proven to be true, it would be ludicrous to avoid honest sellers because their prices have benefited from others who cheat. It would also be ludicrous to say that it's okay to bid on items sold by those who cheat, since the honest sellers benefit as well. I can't buy any such logic.

If you are an ebay customer you have the power to cast a vote against cheating by not bidding on items sold by such sellers, and also by voicing your opinion in public forums. Eventually it could change things - it worked with some of the large auction houses and I see no reason why ebay shouldn't also eventually be held accountable for tolerating illegal activities.

If you have a problem avoiding stuff you really want, that's being sold by questionable sellers, then simply don't ever view their auctions. I do this with several major auction houses, and with several ebay sellers - I simply use the advanced search setting to remove them, and they could have the coolest stuff in the world and I would never know it. I do the same with a few AH's by throwing their catalogs in the recycle bin without opening.

[QUOTE=Runscott;1272826]
If you are an ebay customer you have the power to cast a vote against cheating by not bidding on items sold by such sellers, and also by voicing your opinion in public forums.

just be careful if you choose to voice your opinion on a public forum you may be attacked for doing so

No worries, Ruben, that was a beautiful card. I knew you were looking for one for a while since you've had that on your BST listing, which was why I thought it was you. Next time! :)

I'm sure ebay wants to know how we feel about their policies. It doesn't mean they will change them, but any information from your customers is good to have.

Best post ever. The Rockefeller reference caused me to do a spit-take.