Lesson learned; Max bid on eBay

[glchen]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Guys, this auction was not shilled. I'm pretty sure this is the item in question...

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

If you look at the bidding history, the guy that Dan was bidding against originally bid before Dan bid. Besides, a shiller could have ran it up even more.

Just because the person bid before Dan bid, I don't see how that proves that this was not shilling. Many instances of shilling happen when a seller/consignor have a "hidden reserve" that they are trying to shill the price up to. So the person doesn't have to shill up to the max bid, just up to their "reserve." In addition, the bidder may have seen this thread on this board, and didn't want to seem too obvious.

That the bidder who had his bid retracted wasn't the underbidder doesn't matter either. Obviously in this case, that bidder was a 0 feedback bidder so it could have just been a new account created to see what the max bid was. That new account "may" have been associated with the underbidder (or not).

Obviously, this doesn't prove shilling either. The 0 feedback bidder could have been a completely different person not associated with the underbidder. I've seen cases where someone puts in a large bid like this to try to determine the max bid for the highest bidder, probably in order to determine if they want to put a snipe in if the max bid is still lower than what they are looking at. If if there is a regular reserve on the card, they put in a high bid to try to determine what reserve the seller set on the card. I guess the point is that this could still be anything, and I think the best strategy in general is to still snipe, and not put max bids in, especially ebay auctions.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by glchen

Just because the person bid before Dan bid, I don't see how that proves that this was not shilling. Many instances of shilling happen when a seller/consignor have a "hidden reserve" that they are trying to shill the price up to. So the person doesn't have to shill up to the max bid, just up to their "reserve." In addition, the bidder may have seen this thread on this board, and didn't want to seem too obvious.

That the bidder who had his bid retracted wasn't the underbidder doesn't matter either. Obviously in this case, that bidder was a 0 feedback bidder so it could have just been a new account created to see what the max bid was. That new account "may" have been associated with the underbidder (or not).

Obviously, this doesn't prove shilling either. The 0 feedback bidder could have been a completely different person not associated with the underbidder. I've seen cases where someone puts in a large bid like this to try to determine the max bid for the highest bidder, probably in order to determine if they want to put a snipe in if the max bid is still lower than what they are looking at. If if there is a regular reserve on the card, they put in a high bid to try to determine what reserve the seller set on the card. I guess the point is that this could still be anything, and I think the best strategy in general is to still snipe, and not put max bids in, especially ebay auctions.

Come on, Gary. Are you for real?

If someone wanted to shill Dan up, they obviously could have because his proxy bid was exposed with the bid cancellation.

Did you even look at the bidding history? Did you notice that the user that had his bid cancelled is no longer a registered user? Did you also notice that he bid on several other items from 6 other sellers too?

Read before you post.

[glchen]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Come on, Gary. Are you for real?

If someone wanted to shill Dan up, they obviously could have because his proxy bid was exposed with the bid cancellation.

Did you even look at the bidding history? Did you notice that the user that had his bid cancelled is no longer a registered user? Did you also notice that he bid on several other items from 6 other sellers too?

Read before you post.

David, I don't know if you're just being naïve, but I did look at the bidding history. I don't see how that proves anything. People who shill often bid in other auctions to try to mask their shilling activities. The fact that he's no longer a registered bidder doesn't mean anything. Please read my post completely also. As I stated, it may not be shilling, but I don't think that the bidding history proves this.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Yes, Gary, I'm being naive.

Clearly I don't get it.

[glchen]

Don't worry, David. At least you have no peer in being able to detect altered cards.

[vintagetoppsguy]

I have two questions for you, Gary.

1) If the auction was shilled (which you clearly infer), why didn't the shiller run Dan's bid up to the max? After all, nothing was stopping him.

2) The only bidder that could have shilled that auction would have been n***i (593). So, here is another auction with the same NARU'd user. Who is the shiller on this one since obviously n***i (593) didn't bid in this one?

I would love to hear some more of your wisdom.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

[glchen]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

I have two questions for you, Gary.

1) If the auction was shilled (which you clearly infer), why didn't the shiller run Dan's bid up to the max? After all, nothing was stopping him.

2) The only bidder that could have shilled that auction would have been n***i (593). So, here is another auction with the same NARU'd user. Who is the shiller on this one since obviously n***i (593) didn't bid in this one?

I would love to hear some more of your wisdom.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

David, clearly we are working off of different definitions of shill bidding. For you, it looks like shilling only means when artificial bids are created that run the winning bid up to their max bid. For me, shilling is any artificial bids created by the seller/consignor (or someone related) with the intention of increasing the final price of the item.

As I said in my initial post in this thread (#24), the consignor may have had a hidden reserve that he wanted to be met. Therefore, he shilled to drive the price up to his reserve price. He may have stopped at that point because he thought that price was sufficient for him, or he may have stopped because he had seen this thread so didn't want to bring additional attention to himself.

For the second auction that you are showing, the consignor may have decided that no additional shilling was necessary because the price at that point already surpassed his hidden reserve.

Again, my point here is that unless you know who the consignor and bidders are, you really do not know if you are being shilled or not. Once ebay started masking bidder id's, it made it significantly more difficult to determine if there is shilling going on. I remember a while back, Jeff believed that he was shilled in a PWCC auction for a Cobb card. However, in that instance, I was the consignor to PWCC for that item. I asked PWCC who the underbidder in that auction was, and I sent that ebay id over to Jeff to try to prove to him that no shilling occurred in that auction. So unless the consignor for these items speaks up, and then provides the identities for the bidders in question, we really won't know what really happened in these auctions.