A note about apparent shill bidding

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

I have an auction up on ebay currently, it's posted elsewhere so I won't use this thread to plug it again. But Looking at the bids I can see where it would look like shill bidding. Within an hour of it being listed one bidder placed a bid for a dollar. About a half hour later he was out bid. Over the next 2 minutes he placed 9 individual bids, I guess trying to find the top. He did not do so. Then two hours later a new bidder placed a bid which, while not taking the lead, established what the top bid must be. Then my rapid bidder came in and placed a top bid.

I have no idea who this person is, or even what he hopes to accomplish this early in an auction that should bring in the neighborhood of $2000. Since I can actually check his history I see he is a big buyer of vintage, he actually has a personal email posted in his about me page, and I see no retractions (I assume you find those on the feedback page somewhere?)

I don't recall having ever done business with him before, and I certainly don't know him personally. So, sometimes even when something looks fishy, it's not foul play. I think I've shown on this board that I am quick to question things and the first guy to report nefarious goings-on to ebay, but sometimes things that look odd, are only odd, not fraudulent.

[Snapolit1]

Agree, easy to read a lot into things.

I've been critical of people's bidding habits on PWCC stuff and 90% of their recent bids are on PWCC. Then I realized that I might be someone other people would look at and perhaps bat an eye at my bidding. Sure 90% of my EBay bids in last 6 mos. have been on PWCC. Then again I've never cancelled a bid once on an eBay auction.

[Section103]

Keep in mind - its been noted before on this board that some bidders will intentionally appear to be shilling in order to scare off interest from others.

[Snapolit1]

Considerable debate as to whether that phenomena is real or more "urban legend".

Unless you are doing that yourself I have no idea how you would know this actually exists.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Considerable debate as to whether that phenomena is real or more "urban legend".

Unless you are doing that yourself I have no idea how you would know this actually exists.

I have tried it a few times with no luck. Items still sold at market value so I didn't scare anyone off. I also don't have bid retractions or a high bid percentage with any seller.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Considerable debate as to whether that phenomena is real or more "urban legend".

Unless you are doing that yourself I have no idea how you would know this actually exists.

It's not an "urban legend". It's ridiculously widespread if anything. Bidders have been using this as a tactic almost from the moment Ebay made bidding habits private.

You don't have to be doing it to know this, you just have to be paying attention. Especially if you are a regular seller. I've banned several people from bidding when I've seen them step up the bids, only to retract at the top level.....then I later get an angry message from them asking why they are blocked when they try to put another bid in.

I explain the situation, and they always play dumb.

One time I even got soft and let a guy back in, only to see him repeat the same behavior again. I was pretty livid at the guy and myself for caving after that.

I get a message from a particular guy every couple months or so, wondering why he can't bid in any of my auctions. I just ignore it. I don't even remember if that's the reason he's on my blocked bidder list, but I assume it is because I can't find any record I had done business with him otherwise.

We have our own guy on Net54 who admitted using any tactic available to him to one up other bidders. Including racking up retractions on another type of collectible so his bid history looks as suspect as possible when bidding on baseball stuff.

I don't know if this type of bidding tactic actually works for anybody, but there's no doubt it's going on.

........and I'll say it for the millionth time, the easy fix for Ebay would be to limit retractions to a reasonable amount (say 2 a year, or some other arbitrary number), and a lot of this type of behavior.......along with a lot of actual shilling, would go away.

Ebay wants to hear none of this though. All they want are bids.........good, bad or fraudulent...they don't really care whether it hurts buyers, sellers, or both.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

side note, my oddball bidder is no longer winning the item. of course there's 8 days left.

EDIT: he just dropped 6 bids and is now leading again.

[1952boyntoncollector]

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[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

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Actually only $1200, so I took a beating. And someone is playing similar games now with another auction. I have a 1986 fleer basketball set with PWCC it was at $2125, then that bid was retracted now it's back down to $1400. If this is a scare tactic it might work as it would certainly annoy me if I was a legit bidder.

[ksabet]

Hide in plain sight! I like it!