ebay finds that PWCC engaged in shill bidding?

[packs]

Posting this without comment but it appears shill bidding accusations and faux market bubbles have been made in the video game world as well:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/youtu...190000435.html

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by packs

Posting this without comment but it appears shill bidding accusations and faux market bubbles have been made in the video game world as well:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/youtu...190000435.html

There was probably shill bidding in the agora.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by packs

Posting this without comment but it appears shill bidding accusations and faux market bubbles have been made in the video game world as well:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/youtu...190000435.html

Try to find one single auction marketplace where shill bidding isn't a concern. I'll wait. Some are more rampant than others, with eBay by far being the worst, but no matter how hard they try, it's simply not entirely preventable. And the difference between a 'reserve price' and a 'shill bid' is often semantics at best anyhow. So much so that shill bidding is perfectly legal in some states.

[packs]

I wouldn't say eBay is the worst. I'd say the people on eBay are the worst. As far as I know eBay isn't bidding on auctions for sellers.

[BobC]

Going back to some of the posts questioning card sales for losses, and why would rational people due that, don't forget that more and more people are looking at cards like investments, and therefore not thinking anything like collectors. I'm not saying this is what was actually happening, but did anyone ever consider that someone purposely selling into a down market may have done so as an investor to generate capital losses to then offset against capital gains they already had from sales, and thus save on income taxes? And if the item being sold is a known market commodity that can possibly be expected to go back up in the future (Jordan rookies?), I can also see that seller waiting to get around the wash rules to be able to buy a similar card at the current reduced value back so they hold onto it for future appreciation. They end up basically with the same asset they would have had had they not sold it, but now they get the advantage of utilizing a current capital gains tax loss to put/keep more cash in their pockets. I always called this practice harvesting tax losses.

So there may be other reasons for people doing things that aren't so nefarious, that no has considered.

[packs]

No.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by packs

No.

Oh, so you had considered that already?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

Going back to some of the posts questioning card sales for losses, and why would rational people due that, don't forget that more and more people are looking at cards like investments, and therefore not thinking anything like collectors. I'm not saying this is what was actually happening, but did anyone ever consider that someone purposely selling into a down market may have done so as an investor to generate capital losses to then offset against capital gains they already had from sales, and thus save on income taxes? And if the item being sold is a known market commodity that can possibly be expected to go back up in the future (Jordan rookies?), I can also see that seller waiting to get around the wash rules to be able to buy a similar card at the current reduced value back so they hold onto it for future appreciation. They end up basically with the same asset they would have had had they not sold it, but now they get the advantage of utilizing a current capital gains tax loss to put/keep more cash in their pockets. I always called this practice harvesting tax losses.

So there may be other reasons for people doing things that aren't so nefarious, that no has considered.

Or maybe his wife found out he was cheating so he decided to sell the card to reduce his liabilities in divorce. Also possible, isn't it? You're really out on a limb, Bob, with the speculation.

[Snowman]

Bob is not out on a limb at all. Not even remotely. There is a MASSIVE faction of this market that treats their collections as assets. They have no emotional connection to these cards whatsoever. Not wanting to sell a card at a loss is a completely irrational behavior that is only held by true collectors, not investors. Try putting yourself in an investor's shoes as opposed to your collector shoes for a moment. Instead of it being a Mayweather RC, imagine it was an investment in General Motors stock or Pfizer or pick some other random stock. Say 2 months after you bought it, the market crashes and you want to move some of your money around. Maybe you want to put it in gold or silver or into bitcoin or some other investment opportunity. Are you really not going to sell that General Motors stock for its current market price because you paid double what it's worth today? Really? Are you really telling me that nobody does this?

"Nope, I'm not selling my Pfizer stock until they net me a profit! I don't take losses, God dammit!!!"

This isn't some guy who's been saving up his paper route money until he finally had enough to land his holy grail Mayweather RC. This is someone with money to invest with no emotional connection whatsoever to their cards. He was never going to keep that card. He probably never even saw it in person. Just bought it on eBay, shipped it to his vault, kept it there, and then sold it from his vault so he could put the money in Bitcoin instead.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Bob is not out on a limb at all. Not even remotely. There is a MASSIVE faction of this market that treats their collections as assets. They have no emotional connection to these cards whatsoever. Not wanting to sell a card at a loss is a completely irrational behavior that is only held by true collectors, not investors. Try putting yourself in an investor's shoes as opposed to your collector shoes for a moment. Instead of it being a Mayweather RC, imagine it was an investment in General Motors stock or Pfizer or pick some other random stock. Say 2 months after you bought it, the market crashes and you want to move some of your money around. Maybe you want to put it in gold or silver or into bitcoin or some other investment opportunity. Are you really not going to sell that General Motors stock for its current market price because you paid double what it's worth today? Really? Are you really telling me that nobody does this?

"Nope, I'm not selling my Pfizer stock until they net me a profit! I don't take losses, God dammit!!!"

This isn't some guy who's been saving up his paper route money until he finally had enough to land his holy grail Mayweather RC. This is someone with money to invest with no emotional connection whatsoever to their cards. He was never going to keep that card. He probably never even saw it in person. Just bought it on eBay, shipped it to his vault, kept it there, and then sold it from his vault so he could put the money in Bitcoin instead.

Or it could be a person who is both a collector and an investor who still wants to keep the card, but sells it say to realize a $50K capital loss. They wait 31 days then before going back to try to buy virtually the same card they just sold, for hopefully no more than what they had just sold it for, and if really lucky, for even less so they have some cash from the sale left over. So they end up still owning the same card, but now when they do their taxes they maybe save upwards of $14,000 ($50K loss X 28%) that they otherwise wouldn't have had to buy/invest in other cards, or whatever else they're now interested in.

FYI. I mentioned waiting at least 31 days before trying to buy a similar card back because in sales of stocks, if you sold 100 shares of a particular stock for a loss, but then bought 100 shares of that same stock within a month, either before or after the date you had sold the 100 shares, you would not be able to claim the capital loss for tax purposes under what is known as the wash rule. Now baseball cards are not exactly the same as a company's stock, especially graded cards with their own unique cert numbers, etc. But cards can and are now also considered investments, and I don't know if an IRS agent would argue that one PSA 10 Jordan rookie is the same as another to be able to invoke the wash rule against someone selling one at a loss, and then buying a different PSA 10 Jordan rookie just a couple weeks later. Don't know of any cases out there, but why take a chance if you don't have to, just wait for the month to pass to be sure. Throwing this out as general knowledge for anyone reading this thread.

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Not wanting to sell a card at a loss is a completely irrational behavior that is only held by true collectors, not investors. Try putting yourself in an investor's shoes as opposed to your collector shoes for a moment. Instead of it being a Mayweather RC, imagine it was an investment in General Motors stock or Pfizer or pick some other random stock. Say 2 months after you bought it, the market crashes and you want to move some of your money around. Maybe you want to put it in gold or silver or into bitcoin or some other investment opportunity. Are you really not going to sell that General Motors stock for its current market price because you paid double what it's worth today? Really? Are you really telling me that nobody does this?

"Nope, I'm not selling my Pfizer stock until they net me a profit! I don't take losses, God dammit!!!"

This isn't some guy who's been saving up his paper route money until he finally had enough to land his holy grail Mayweather RC. This is someone with money to invest with no emotional connection whatsoever to their cards. He was never going to keep that card. He probably never even saw it in person. Just bought it on eBay, shipped it to his vault, kept it there, and then sold it from his vault so he could put the money in Bitcoin instead.

When it comes to this "I'm not taking a loss" subject, you have little understanding of what often drives human behavior.

Grown adults often do exactly what you're mocking there (with something like their Pfizer stock). They absolutely DO think your exact foot-stopping quote of "I'm not gonna sell until a get a profit!", regardless of what the sensible allocation of their investments should be going forward. Has nothing to do with whether it's a "collector" or "investor"; it's the same principle for anyone involved with a speculative asset. The only time that many can stomach and justify taking the loss is (as brought up above) when it's to offset capital gains.

It's easy for someone to get married to their purchase price (human nature for a number of unflattering or poorly thought-out reasons.) And on the flip side, they also take profits for the wrong reasons. Because what you "made" isn't the key factor either, except for tax purposes. Once you own something, the purchase price is a sunk cost. All that matters is what the value is now, what could happen going forward, your risk tolerance at the current value for that asset, what portion it is of your overall portfolio, etc. But I digress.

Rationality isn't what dictates decisions sometimes. Especially when it comes to this.

[Fuddjcal]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Bob is not out on a limb at all. Not even remotely. There is a MASSIVE faction of this market that treats their collections as assets. They have no emotional connection to these cards whatsoever. Not wanting to sell a card at a loss is a completely irrational behavior that is only held by true collectors, not investors. Try putting yourself in an investor's shoes as opposed to your collector shoes for a moment. Instead of it being a Mayweather RC, imagine it was an investment in General Motors stock or Pfizer or pick some other random stock. Say 2 months after you bought it, the market crashes and you want to move some of your money around. Maybe you want to put it in gold or silver or into bitcoin or some other investment opportunity. Are you really not going to sell that General Motors stock for its current market price because you paid double what it's worth today? Really? Are you really telling me that nobody does this?

"Nope, I'm not selling my Pfizer stock until they net me a profit! I don't take losses, God dammit!!!"

This isn't some guy who's been saving up his paper route money until he finally had enough to land his holy grail Mayweather RC. This is someone with money to invest with no emotional connection whatsoever to their cards. He was never going to keep that card. He probably never even saw it in person. Just bought it on eBay, shipped it to his vault, kept it there, and then sold it from his vault so he could put the money in Bitcoin instead.

Why don't we just stipulate that Brent Mastro has been and is a cheater effer and move on? You do know that, correct?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Or maybe his wife found out he was cheating so he decided to sell the card to reduce his liabilities in divorce. Also possible, isn't it? You're really out on a limb, Bob, with the speculation.

Peter, I distinctly said this wasn't necessarily what was happening in the specific cases several posters were going back and forth about. But it does seem true that as our hobby appears to really be plunged into the investment side of things that actions of some may start more from an investment way of thinking. I've had numerous discussions with people adopting this investment strategy over the years, especially in times where markets are down, like the crash back in 2008, or even the 2020 market hit from the pandemic. They still like the investment (card) and don't necessarily want to sell it, but if there is a way they could still keep that investment (card) AND also generate a current tax saving capital loss, why wouldn't they go for it? Time value of money and all, they could take the dollars they saved from harvesting the tax losses and use it to buy more investments (cards) that they maybe couldn't have afforded to buy now otherwise. You would likely be surprised how many people would think of harvesting capital losses like that.

I'm not speculating at all, this thinking and investment strategy happens every day. I'm merely trying to point out that there may be other legit reasons for what some people say are attempts to manipulate the card market that they did not realize and consider. This hobby is undergoing such rapid and dramatic changes right now that you have to be aware of new ideas and concepts going forward, and can't just blindly assume things aren't changing, whether you like or agree with them or not.

So I am not out on any limb and what I'm saying is absolutely valid, whether it is applicable to the specific cases discussed in this thread or not. If not those cases, maybe the next ones down the road.

And even your postulated reason for selling having to do with a pending divorce could be a valid alternative as well, however, a lot less likely I think than my suggestion for selling to harvest capital losses for tax purposes. First off, you said they may have sold to reduce liabilities, don't you mean reduce assets so they could then try to hide the cash and pay less in the divorce settlement? Of course, that begs the question of whether the spouse knew about the card to begin with. Assuming they did, the sale could have been to establish the exact value for the divorce proceedings and make it real easy to just split the cash between the parties. Otherwise, if the spouse knew of the card they would likely tell their attorney, who would likely inquire and investigate what it ended up selling for and where did the cash go. And if the spouse was not aware of the card, I think the last thing you'd want to do is sell it to potentially create a taxable event that the spouse's attorney could pick up from doing a review of the divorcing couple's tax returns. In that case you'd be better off leaving the card alone and just keeping it, and a big reason why a sale because of divorce may be less likely than a sale to utilize capital losses.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

Peter, I distinctly said this wasn't necessarily what was happening in the specific cases several posters were going back and forth about. But it does seem true that as our hobby appears to really be plunged into the investment side of things that actions of some may start more from an investment way of thinking. I've had numerous discussions with people adopting this investment strategy over the years, especially in times where markets are down, like the crash back in 2008, or even the 2020 market hit from the pandemic. They still like the investment (card) and don't necessarily want to sell it, but if there is a way they could still keep that investment (card) AND also generate a current tax saving capital loss, why wouldn't they go for it? Time value of money and all, they could take the dollars they saved from harvesting the tax losses and use it to buy more investments (cards) that they maybe couldn't have afforded to buy now otherwise. You would likely be surprised how many people would think of harvesting capital losses like that.

I'm not speculating at all, this thinking and investment strategy happens every day. I'm merely trying to point out that there may be other legit reasons for what some people say are attempts to manipulate the card market that they did not realize and consider. This hobby is undergoing such rapid and dramatic changes right now that you have to be aware of new ideas and concepts going forward, and can't just blindly assume things aren't changing, whether you like or agree with them or not.

So I am not out on any limb and what I'm saying is absolutely valid, whether it is applicable to the specific cases discussed in this thread or not. If not those cases, maybe the next ones down the road.

And even your postulated reason for selling having to do with a pending divorce could be a valid alternative as well, however, a lot less likely I think than my suggestion for selling to harvest capital losses for tax purposes. First off, you said they may have sold to reduce liabilities, don't you mean reduce assets so they could then try to hide the cash and pay less in the divorce settlement? Of course, that begs the question of whether the spouse knew about the card to begin with. Assuming they did, the sale could have been to establish the exact value for the divorce proceedings and make it real easy to just split the cash between the parties. Otherwise, if the spouse knew of the card they would likely tell their attorney, who would likely inquire and investigate what it ended up selling for and where did the cash go. And if the spouse was not aware of the card, I think the last thing you'd want to do is sell it to potentially create a taxable event that the spouse's attorney could pick up from doing a review of the divorcing couple's tax returns. In that case you'd be better off leaving the card alone and just keeping it, and a big reason why a sale because of divorce may be less likely than a sale to utilize capital losses.

I said reduce liabilities IN divorce, which to me meant reducing what one would owe the spouse and so in effect means reducing one's own assets. But sorry if I was imprecise there.

And rational or not I think it does happen that guys getting divorced try to hide their collection or cash part of it out. There was a member here who shall remain nameless who had his whole collection on a personal website. When he became headed for divorce, it disappeared.