What are the chances when you set an autobid that an auction company...

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Peter Chao writes:

"There is no law that forbids an auction house from bidding in other auctions. If they have an auction two months later, they can simply buy up similar stuff from Ebay and other auctions. It would be an artificial way of increasing the market price.

Then when their auction came up people would bid higher than they should."

That is not shilling, Peter, it is not establishing a fake or manipulated price, and it is not what the post was asking about. If an auction house honestly bids in an auction and honestly pays for an item it wins, that is a legitimate sale at "market". Your post doesn't even make any sense; I guarantee you that no reseller buys an item with the goal of losing money on the resale, so if an auctioneer is buying through an auction it can only be because he believes that the item is a good deal at that price.

What is being asked about in this post is an entirely different thing, namely, whether a bidder who leaves an autobid should be worried that one auctioneer has a deal to engage in shill bidding in concert with another auctioneer designed to drive up the prices to the limits where autobids are maxed out. That is indeed illegal under a variety of laws, including specific laws regulating auctioneers and good old fraud. I too have heard the rumors as to certain auction houses. I have no facts to prove their complicity. I can say that I have won lots for far less than my autobid limits in Mastro, Collectible Classics, Lipset, Clean Sweep and Lelands, so I have no reason to believe that any of those entities engage in shilling of any type. That said, any time you put in a maximum bid you MUST assume that you will have to pay it.