What percentage of ebay card auctions are legit?

[Jetsfan]

I was checking out some auctions on ebay, and it seems that many auctions are of cards that were recently "won" by someone. I put "won" in quotes because I suspect that this is the same person or a friend winning and then putting it up again. Any rough idea how rampant this is? Any advice on reputable ebay sellers versus who to stay away from?

Here's an example of one of the auctions I'm referring to:

http://m.ebay.com/itm/141375169301?nav=SEARCH

[drcy]

One thing to remember is there are non-paying winners, so if a card is re-listed it can because the original winner (unrelated to the seller) didn't pay. Sellers often complain about winners who don't pay.

If you think someone is shilling his own auctions, don't bid in their auctions.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I would assume most eBay sellers don't shill their auctions because, 1) Most people are honest and ethical and 2) Shilling is illegal. I think the bad sellers, including sellers of bad items, are finite. The proverbial bad apples are usually the few. Also, eBay allows seller to sell outright and completely forgo the bidding process. There can be trickery and inflated prices in straight sales, but can be no shill bidding where there is no bidding. For the record, I think most buyers are also honest and ethical.

An obvious response is to identify honest sellers and buy from them, and keep your eyes open when bidding with unfamiliar sellers. My concern as a buyer was mostly with authenticity and getting the actual item, and reliability there could be deduced from their auction photos and descriptions and their selling history. Also, many sellers have a good word of mouth reputation. Ask around who are favorite sellers.

I will add that there was a time that snipe bidding was considered by many old timers to be unethical and cheating-- meaning, bidders complaining the technique out other bidders who had bid in the traditional way. So I don't think bidders can always claim the moral high ground (especially when they support known bad sellers by bidding in their auctions). And, in fact, I think eBayers moving from auctions to sales was often a reaction to snipe bidding, with snipe bidding a way to upend the traditional bidding process in order to suppress the final prices. However, as some sellers do shill and many bidders legitimately worry about being shilled, I'm not claiming the issue as black and white or one sided. Just that snipe bidding caused a lot of the very issues that bidders now complain about, including the lack of auctions on eBay and sellers ending auctions early. Whether ethical or not, when a nervous auctioneer sees few to no bids on an expensive item more than halfway through an auction, he may entertain ending the auction to sell to a reasonable offer. As he's been burned before, he may not count on invisible snipe bids being placed and will go strictly by what he sees-- a lack of bids. In the traditional auction format, before invisible snipe bids and when it was abnormal to only bid in the last half second, he could see throughout the auction that there was tangible bidders interest in the item. In short, I firmly believe the plethora of auctions ended early is a result of snipe bidding and find it ironic when snipers complain about the practice (along with the dearth of eBay auctions). Bidders found a new fangled computer program to get steals or otherwise suppress prices in auctions, and sellers, including honest sellers and and sellers who don't shill, don't want to sell at steal or suppressed prices, so moved to different ways to sell. It's known as action and reaction. And, remember (my paragraph is so long I have to refer to the beginning), it was bidders not the sellers who originally complained that sniping was cheating. They considered it unfair to fellow bidders.

[Jetsfan]

Yes, but this auction in particular, as well as others I have seen, are the same card with different sellers.

[marcdelpercio]

If I'm looking at this correctly, the card originally sold more than two months ago, so I can think of a number of legitimate reasons why it would be resold now. Perhaps the current seller thinks he/she could get more for it, has changed collecting focus, or just needs money for something else. There is certainly a LOT of questionable stuff that occurs on eBay, so that can't be minimized, but I'm not really seeing it with this example.

[Jetsfan]

I suppose. But why would the person who won and the seller have different id if that's the case? Do most on ebay have more than one I'd?

[Peter_Spaeth]

A buys it from B and consigns it to C.
A, the buyer, has different buying and selling IDs.
I'd be more on the alert for shenanigans if it was the same seller which would suggest the card didn't really sell the first time.

[Jetsfan]

Wow. Much simpler when I bought my cards out of Baseball Advertiser. Miss those days.

[Jobu]

I am just getting back into the collecting game and figuring out the finer points of Ebay bidding on cards. I often check the bid history to see if something is fishy. If you click on the number of bids followed by each bidder's partially hidden name you can see the % of bids that each bidder has placed with that seller. I recently saw one that placed 58% with the seller, something that definitely raised a red flag. While this does suck as a bidder looking for a good price, as we all know nobody can force you to spend more than you are willing to spend so you can just drop out of the bidding even if frustrated. One can also take some comfort in the knowledge that a seller has to pay a % to Ebay each time an item is sold, so if one continually sells to him/herself they will lose money each time.

[steve_a]

There's a lot of discussion re ebay shills on this board. I don't think it is a huge issue for the reasons Jobu mentions. Besides, there is price discovery to be learned from a shilled auction. In stock terms you learn the "bid" where a non-shilled auction gives you the "ask".

[glynparson]

and keep them separate. I too feel most auctions do not shill bid. There are also people that make their money buying stuff that goes cheap on ebay relisting it and getting more money. I think sometimes this stuff gets over thought.