PWCC Auctions - Mystery Bid Post Auction?
 

I know... I know... Why did I even bother?

I thought I would check out the new auction format for PWCC and ended up impulsively bidding for a card (which I didn't even need).

See the post auction experience below...

Email: Congratulations! You Won! Total Due: $26
Website: Congratulations! You Won! Total Due: $66



I have emailed customer support...

Sorry to Hear/See that

Ok that is beyond odd.
Was there really another bid? IS there some extreme fees?

Have you reached out to them?

“Thank you sir may i have another?”

LOL....maybe they shilled the system?

I decided to watch a few cards that I need for my set builds. I figured if was more likely that the first auction out of the gates would be less likely to have any apparent shenanigans. Most everything finished outside my budget, so no loss to me. But, the thing that will keep me from bidding on their future auctions is that the closed auctions don't show any bid history, as near as I can tell.

With all the other auction houses I deal with, you can see bid history (but not any type of bidder identification.) With eBay, not only can you see bid history, you can also see an anonymized bidder identification and from that ID you can see that bidders history with the particular seller. It isn't complete proof, but with the history information you can start to get some notion as to whether shill bidding may be happening.

The opacity of this new PWCC platform is enough to keep me away. Though, I swim in the shallow end of the hobby pool, so no great loss to them. I am sure they won't even notice.

Well...to be honest, the $26 seems a little on the light side. But I have sold a ton of cards on the light side recently. Maybe the $66 was their hidden reserve?

Can you put up a link to the auction?

Went to bed last night thinking I had won a T205 Cicotte at $105. Auction for the individual card had closed and didn't appear that any additional bids could be made.

Woke up this morning and found that somehow I had been outbid and the auction had closed at $155.

I am thinking they are pushing these up to meet hidden reserves. No one is to question anything they say or do. Me personally, I will pass. The last guy I remember doing stuff like that was the Battlefield guy who took his auctions off Ebay (after he was booted off).

There is zero way to see the bid history or anything??? Someone got an email that he won at one price, then got an invoice for a HUGE markup!!! That doesn't look good.

Near as I can tell, no. Granted, I didn't actually enter any bids.

I have placed a bid on a card that closes on Friday. I'm 99.9% sure I won't win it, so I guess we'll see if actual bidders have access to bid history that the peanut gallery doesn't.

FWIW, I won two >$100 items last night (both graded Auth, so I wasn't worried about card doctoring issues). I bid as I went along, rather than place an auto bid, and the invoice listed both items for my final/winning bid price.

+1 from their time on Ebay their reputation and now on there own site and hearing these type of things.

I am staying on the side lines on their auctions

It is a shame they do have some cards at times I would love to get.

But not worth it to me

In addition to the Cicotte that I didn't end up winning, I also bid on a cheap 1989 Topps set. Received an email last night stating I had won with a bid of $10, and similar to the example above, I received my invoice this morning and the bid total was showing as $12.

$12 just happened to be the max bid I had entered.

And to answer the question about bid history, I haven't been able to find a bid history for either the auctions I lost or the auction I won.

I won 2 items, and received an email titled "Congratulations! You Won!".

The price in the email for the first item matched the winning bid I had seen last evening and was indeed below my max. The price in the email for the second item was less than half of the final price, as well as below the overtime price, and was equal to my max bid (actual final price was about 10% below recent sales of the same item).

My guess is some glitch occurred with their system sending out these "you won" emails with incorrect prices.

Customer Service
 

I have reached out to customer service and we will see what they say...

I am the last person to defend them, but it sounds like glitches with their new system.

I emailed PWCC as I had the same issue. I received an email last night that had my winning bid and an invoice that was at my max bid. Luckily the difference was only a few bucks. Their response was that the initial email was wrong and that I was invoiced for the final price (which happened to be my max bid). I think in the future I will no longer use the max bid feature if I decide to bid in their auctions again.

Looks like.....
 

They didn't thoroughly test their new shilling platform....errr auction platform?

I get that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but it certainly is one heck of a glitch that has invoiced at least two people at their maximum bid, rather than at the bid they thought was the closing price. I suppose there could be an innocent explanation, but without seeing bid history we'll just have to take their (PWCC) word for it.

He can't be THAT stupid can he?

I'm surprised you would ask that :D

Unless somewhere in his fine print it says "all final bids follow the silent bid system used by local fun night fundraisers. In other words no matter what the "winning bid" actually is you pay the max you wrote down"

It's just too blatant. I don't believe he is shilling every single auction up to the max bid (in effect).

Your fault. You didn't pay fast enough. You had two minutes to drop the $26 in the mail, but you just had to finish that cup of coffee.

I am soo glad I sat this one out, as I will in any of their future auctions. What with an undignified boot from Ebay over shill bidding, longstanding issues of knowingly auctioning off slabbed altered cards and dealing with known fraudsters, now we have the rollout of their first independent auction. Yes, there were some nice cards there, but bidders were now faced with with extended bidding and a BP on some items. Now it appears a very serious systems glitch on winners' invoices has occurred.....all on their 1st auction.

Perhaps it is just me, but I wonder if this is the beginning of the death spiral of PWCC. I don't, of course, know any of the financials, but If I were Brent, and thank God I am not, I would be working the worry beads overtime.

Hanlon's razor (not Ned) applies. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

So.. I won a few lots for resale. Won them at fair prices with some minor competition but liked the closing.

Invoice was correct and all prices matched my bid history.

That's the good news.

I paid my invoice by CC and somehow missed the various options to where the have my items sent(the few items that I have won on ebay over the years have always went to me my house or PO Box).

Now I have learned that by default they went to the vault(I discovered this after I saw no shipping charge). I contacted them immediately by their preferred chat method and was quickly entered into a back and forth conversation to amend the shipping error or so one would think.

My items were sent to the vault and they will not change the address. I have to wait approximately 20-25 days for the items to be curated into the vault and then request they be sent to me......I tried reasoning with them to no avail, that there must be some kind of remedy.

BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN PAYING YOUR INVOICE, the VAULT is the default address now, no matter where you had items sent before.

Scott

PWCC has reached out to me and helped expedite the process, please see my post below #33.

Very odd.....you can buy your cards and not take possession of them??? No thanks!

That...is stupid.

You'd think they'd be eager to make you happy so your first experience on their new platform is a positive one.

Try getting your broker to send you paper stock certificates some time.

Added in edit: One thing that really stood out to me on the new PWCC platform is that the cards are described as "assets." It says a lot about how PWCC views their business.

Well they did try to be helpful and told me I "should have paid attention" when checking out....

He adopted that term years ago pre-scandal. To his credit he anticipated a long time ago how cards would increasingly be viewed as commodities to be invested in.

Resolution
 

Follow up......

So I reached out to Brent via email and within the hour I was contacted by a very helpful CS rep who while unable to reverse what I had done, was able to fasttrack the cards thru curation and into the Vault upon which I can have them sent to me. The curation should be done by weeks end, so only a few days longer than it would have been, had it processed as I thought it had.

The rep was most helpful and responsive.

Again, if you are paying for these items online just go slow and click the right boxes..

Scott

Is the shipping fee reasonable? If not disclosed up front I'd be concerned about excessive handling and processing fees

Is this a brokerage firm for assets or an auction house for cards ?

LoL just teasing.

I won a single graded card at a fair but rather low price and the shipping was $5.00.

Scott, I noticed right away that something was amiss when they showed the invoice and it waived/ struck-though the fees for shipping and sales tax (see OP post with scan). I figured the shipping could be waived as some sort of introductory offer but not the tax and they surely wouldn't be so bold as to show it wasn't being collected. I figured it must have been a promo for the Vault and sure enough, that was the default setting.

I believe my shipping was originally $15 I can’t see it currently, I assume the shipping from the vault will be the same. Mine was 4 cards at a value of just under 900. I did not have an issue with that. It’s a little more than some, a little less than others, so about average I would say.

This thread needs a devil's advocate, no?

Snowman, where art thou?

Scott, I was bidding on one relatively high-priced card (1914 CJ Lajoie) and ultimately decided to stand down in the 4th extended bidding because I was afraid the card would go into their vault and not sent to me; and I could not figure out how to change that. I think it’s real crappy that their default is into the vault and they make it very tough to change it, if at all. I don’t want them, or Goldin or anyone else with a vault, holding my cards and I think it’s shitty that that’s the default. So, until that “glitch” gets changed, I have placed my last bid in a pwcc auction.

vault
 

I don't know about your state, but in Wisconsin, if you have your items sent to the vault and don't pay sales tax, when the cards are sent to your address in Wisconsin, they become taxable and you will have to pay use tax on the purchase.

PWCC has my TX resale certificate on file.....these are for resale.

You buy from PWCC for resale??? Is that even possible?? That is like me buying from Dean's Cards for resale. Sorry, but the bone has been picked clean.

\

Ryan,

When I went to pay originally, the option to choose where you wanted the cards sent was presented, Vault or my address on record(Vault was the highlighted default). I of course opted to have them sent directly to me. However, the invoice had tax included, so I provided my resale cert and they promptly adjusted the invoice. When I went back to the corrected invoice and paid, the shipping option had defaulted back to the Vault and I did not catch it. Really nothing nefarious, just a business steering their customers where they prefer them to go. I SHOULD have double checked everything, I ASSUMED and we all know how that story goes.

Once I contacted Brent, they promptly took care of it to the best or their ability. As of now the items already show in my Vault, not able to request them yet, but not worried as everything is working out as they said it would.

I would like to point out to everyone that during this entire email/chat/posting here, that I was precise, cordial and polite, no stones were thrown and it was handled very professionally by them on their end. I think that is about all you can ask when things go a bit sideways. It's easy to start the name calling and accusations, especially on an internet forum, not so easy to undo them.

There were many good pre-war deals, just in the small amount I was tracking. I passed on a few that were just marginally good as the bidding progressed, and hung in to get the better ones.

Is there a razor which would attribute things to a blend of malice and incompetence?

I bid on quite a few cards in this auction. I just checked my bidding log spreadsheet and compared those prices against the ones from my invoice. I wrote down the listed hammer price at the conclusion of the auctions for every card I won. It looks like I won 32 cards. Of those 32, 26 show the same price and 6 do not. However, the prices that are listed on my invoice are all lower than the prices shown on the website at the conclusion of the auction, not higher. Based on my sample data, I believe it is also showing my max bid amount on the website as the hammer price, whereas the invoice via email has the actual winning bid amounts (which are lower). But when I click the link in the email to go to checkout, I am given the higher amounts.

I imagine this must be a glitch in their system that will get sorted out asap. I don't think they are stupid enough to have done this intentionally. I expect they'll send out emails correcting/addressing this shortly. If not, I will start shitting on them too.

Scott, thanks for clarifying. That said, I still do not like that the default is vault and that I need to take an extra step to have the card sent to me.

I agree that in ALL of my interactions with PWCC they are very responsive, helpful and polite. They certainly do customer service right. That said, I just don’t like that I need to be mindful to change preferences in order to get my cards - it just feels like a trap for the unweary (and I am an unweary!).

That should be changed - the default should be all cards and/or payouts are sent out unless one formally opts to have card put in vault or money kept on account

This is most likely the case for someone that lives in any of the 45 states that have a sales AND use tax. So people thinking they can buy through PWCC and initially have their purchases go to PWCC's Oregon vault where no sales tax is charged, and then subsequently requesting their items be sent to them at their home address, need to remember that they then owe the use tax on those purchased items to the state/county they subsequently have their items sent to. I would advise anyone thinking of doing something like this to maybe first check with their accountant or other tax professionals, and to also review the sales and use tax laws for their respective state of residency. I am fairly confident though that regardless of which of the 45 states that have sales and use taxes, if you live in one of them and try to use a vault to get out of paying sales tax and then right away have the vault company just forward to you the items you had just purchased, you have most likely technically triggered a use tax liability equal to what the sales tax would have been on the original purchase.

There are always going to be people that view a vault like PWCC's or Goldin's, that were intentionally set up in states that do not have sales taxes, as a way to get around having to pay sales tax on their purchases, especially since Ebay and more and more AHs are now collecting sales taxes due to changes in the sales tax laws following a Supreme Court ruling from a few years back. PWCC and Goldin use this as a marketing technique to attract more customers, since they offer buyers a way around sales taxes. And it is also a way to assure and increase future consignments for both companies should people leaving items in their vaults subsequently decide to sell something. If a person decides to sell an item and asks PWCC or Goldin for it back to do so, or that it be sent to another AH or consignment seller to be sold on their behalf, then I believe technically they may have triggered the use tax on the original purchase of the item now being sold. If the person wishing to sell an item in a vault just consigns it back over to PWCC or Goldin, it never leaves the non-sales taxing states those two companies are operating out of, and the seller doesn't trigger use tax on the sale of the item. And the subsequent sale by PWCC or Goldin of this consigned item to a new owner affords both sellers the chance to entice/persuade/coerce the new owner to avail themselves of the respective vaults they both operate. Which in turn gives PWCC and Goldin an inside track to gain future consignments from this new seller as well, and on and on. It is a somewhat ingenious way both PWCC and Goldin can take advantage of the inherent greed in many people by having devised a way for them to get out of paying sales taxes on purchases, but also kind of locks those people in to staying only with PWCC or Goldin if they want to maintain that sales/use tax-free status going forward then.

Obviously a vault isn't for everyone, especially the old guard hobby collectors and purists who want to actually be able to hold and look at their cards and collectibles in hand, not just look at scans. But with a vault, an owner doesn't have to worry about where or how to store items, probably helps for insurance and record keeping purposes also since everything will be catalogued and supposedly maintained in a safe and secure environment. And if they do want to share what they own with others, I'm assuming they either have or can get a digital record of what they do have residing in a vault. And as already noted, if an owner does decide to let something go, they can easily and simply just have it consigned to the brother/sister company of the vault that handles sales.

And a vault obviously isn't needed (or wanted probably) by a dealer who already is registered as such and can supply a resale sales tax exemption certificate to whomever they are buying something from, as a vault doesn't save them any sales taxes.

However, there is a potential grey area in regards to triggering use tax when it comes to taking things out of a vault and having them sent to a state that does have a sales and use tax. If you buy something, have it put into into a sales tax-free vault, and then right away take it back out of the vault and have it sent to your home, that should most definitely trigger a use tax liability if you reside in a state with a sales tax. But what if you wait 6 months before taking an item out of a vault, or a year, or 5 years? To my knowledge, individual states do not have general or specific time threshholds on how long you may have owned something like baseball cards before it is exempt from use tax when bringing it into a new state. Think of this. What if you lived in a sales tax free state your entire life, and had all your furniture, clothing, and belongings purchased in that same state, so you never paid sales tax on anything. And then you move and take all your belongings, furniture, and clothes with you to your new home, in a state that does have sales tax. Do you now have to suddenly pay use tax on everything you had acquired over your entire lifetime to the state you just moved to? Most likely not. But what about on a new living room set you purchased in your old state with no sales taxes the week before you moved to your new home state? See how complicated this can get? This is again a reason to review your own particular case with your accountant or tax professional if you are planning on removing items from a vault, and to also review the sales and use tax laws for the applicable state you're going to move those items to.

What I don't know is what, if anything, PWCC and Goldin tell their vault customers in regards to sales and use tax issues, and if they even try to forewarn them of any potential sales/use tax liabilities if they remove items from a vault. Maybe some people that do use their vaults can fill us in and share what they know. I would also not be surprised if down the road, companies that set up sales tax-free vaults like this don't start to attract the attention of other states that do charge sales and use taxes, and potentially try to force the vaults to report/share information with them.

I would think that the use tax would only be due on purchases you made while a resident of the state so anything you owned prior to moving to a new state with a use tax would not be subject to the use tax.