Pwcc
 

Anyone watching/hoping to win anything in PWCC's current offerings on ebay?

Well I was hoping to have a chance on one. Just took a look at it and see the price has gone from $500 something to over a thousand in the last hour or so.

Bid up by a bidder with 5 transactions on ebay all bidding activity w/PWCC.

As much as I love cards and this hobby...I will not be a sucker!

I read about redeeming Ebay rewards a few days ago, it been sweet if it landed on the closing day. Yes I saw a few interesting items. Watching them to see where it goes, might take a snipe on something.
In the end, with REA and SCP auctions, theres other fish to fry!!!

Yep, I agree with you. I am very cautious about what I buy for this same reason. It is unfortunate that its so hard to get an honest deal these days. Its obvious something is getting shilled, there is something PWCC has that's ending in a few days that I REALLY want, but I am scared it will get shilled. :mad:

I have one left on there for tomorrow at 9:30. If I don't win it, oh well. I would rather someone on this board get my money for something else that I feel is a good deal than impulse bid up a card that I maxed bid the first time.

Just curious, have we ever had a thread pertaining PWCC?:rolleyes:

Mr I love everything PSA does and hate everything about SGC,


if we eliminated all recurring/repeating threads...there'd be no board!

Fair enough, point taken...

bids.
 

Attempted bids that I thought would be actually right where auctions should be ending and already outbid. If I would have tried to sell them on eBay they would have gone for a fraction of the price. Grrrrrrr.
Need to hire some shillers I guess

There is a N172 OJ Harry Wright currently listed by PWCC that was also sold by PWCC back in February for $3,800. Yesterday I sent PWWC a message asking what happened. I don't know if I'll get an answer or not, but the response, or lack there of, should tell me all I need to know. Sorry for outing the auction to anyone who was interested in bidding.

I'm watching and bidding on more lots than I can ever remember in a pwcc auction. Lots of nice Mantles and some HOF RCS I've been looking for.

My two experiences with PWCC have been quite satisfactory, winning a '39 V351 Williams rookie and a '68-'70 Partridge Meats Bench for well under my maximum bids. Small sample size, I know, but just sayin.

Best regards to all,

Larry

Thanks Larry, maybe you can PM Pete U. and share the news with him....

no need to pm me...I can read. how much proof do you need, KEVIN...before you believe there are certain sellers that cheat! Just because they don't cheat all the time...doesn't take away the fact that THEY CHEAT!!!!

If you don't mind being cheated...then bid on their stuff.

56 PSA 5 Mantles
 

All 3 are bid up to the same number by the same bidder IDs. Coincidental?

Just set a realistic maximum bid reflecting what you believe is the real value of the card (and if you are value-oriented, with consideration of the upside and downside potential for appreciation/depreciation), stick with that, and you won't get cheated. If you get it fine, if you don't, you haven't lost anything except a single opportunity to acquire a desired card (in most, though not all cases, there will be others forthcoming in the future). It really is that simple, unless you think you're entitled to a bargain well below what you believe is actual market value. If you're not successful in acquiring the cards you want that way, perhaps your appraisal of real market value is inaccurate.

Just MHO and self-imposed bidding restrictions,

Larry

Brent has come on here in the past and said that he will block suspicious bidders if you notify him via eBay's message function on those auctions. He says that sellers cannot see bidder history info like we can, so copy/paste that into a message for him, and you may see those bids cancelled.

I have relatively low feedback, 150 or so on ebay, and a high percentage with pwcc if you look me up. I will occasionally place a bid on similar or identical cards that I know won't win just so the cards show up in my bidding feed. Easier to see on my phone. This kind of activity isn't always indicative of fraud or shill bidding even though it looks suspicious.

think this is an unfair statement. doubt very seriously brent is cheating.

are there people who consign w/ pwcc and bid up their own product, sure. hard to stop that as it doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure out how to do that.

but to insist that brent has something to do w/ it and w/ zero proof to back it up, i think is completely unfair.

now before you throw out the "turning a blind eye" argument, again...ya need proof. I've only asked him to check into 2 auctions that I was serious on and got back to me w/I an hour. you'd be surprised at the amount of people that only need a few items and would only use ebay for a small fraction to fill these holes, so their bid history of 50%+ seems suspicious.

retractions? different story, but I know he booted 2 folks last auction for the number of retractions they had.

without any evidence we can speculate all day long and on every topic.

not defending him, but unless there is absolute certainty or an ebay list surfaces similar to the maestro one, it's hard to call him a "cheat", imo.

flame on.

Pretty good job of defending him...without defending him

but you have a point...I misspoke. some sellers allow/do not make a very good effort to prevent cheating.

There's a bunch of low value cards in this auction that I have set up in Gavelsnipe.com. That is very unusual for me with PWCC.
I guess I have to hope no one is using Gavelshill.com on those cards.

i guess. just posting my factual experiences. the point stands true though, correct?

(and nothing consigned w/ him. and the two things that did peak my interest, no longer do as they have already surpassed my price point)

I have had some decent experiences with PWCC also, I think the guy that runs it is legit but the people the consign are the ones who run the auctions up.

As long as the consigners are assessed fees on the their own cards they 'won' thats fine...if they just get a do over then thats a problem to me..

Please help me understand why you don't understand this sentence written at the top of every page in bold letters?

If you give an opinion of a person or company your full name needs to be in your post.

Jimmy Steele, I forgot, I am still fairly new to this forum, no need to get rude. :mad:

I doubt Leon was being rude, just one of the few rules taken seriously here.

They have been cheating as long as there have been auctions, going back to when I first started getting involved in auctions. Shill bidding is the second oldest profession. It didn't take me long to distance from all auctions.

Pwcc
 

I like PWCC, have had good experiences but this is the stuff I have a hard time putting my mind around. I realize its hard to police all their auctions for shilling/fraud, but wouldn't something like this example (and there are several BTW) raise a number of red flags immediately? Same new/relatively low feedback bidder, running same grade card up well over VCP recent average or max, and 13 bid retractions within 6 mos! :confused: I've been on eBay for 15+ years and I've never had 1.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-11-T206...4AAOSwBnVW-ANt

I've won a couple of differnet cards off of them in the few years I've been collecting.

PSA 4 Doc Crandall cap with portrait
PSA 2 Joe Tinker batting

The prices on these were pretty good. However I often see plenty of cards they have for sale that are........... let's just say the opposite of good. And they're nothing special. I'm talking common commons going for well above what a sane person would pay.

I glanced at the recent listings and it appears as though there's NOTHING (in my price range) that I would consider a good deal. And there's still plenty of time for the prices to get crazier.

Then you are looking at the wrong cards. I know for a FACT that there is a $500 card that is currently at $98. I'm sure there are others, but I am watching one in particular.

I'm actually thinking this might be a bidding strategy by some folks. A while ago, I was bidding on two 1975 Topps complete sets being auctioned by PWCC. I sniped both of them, and ended up being the underbidder for both of them. I checked the bid history for both sets, and I saw that I lost to the same bidder for both of them. The very next day, I received a second chance offer for one of the sets. Of course, not wanting to have been possibly shilled up, I declined.

I have no proof or evidence or anything. However, in that case, I have the feeling that the same bidder who won both 1975 sets in my case decided he only wanted one of them, and picked the one he liked better. Then he basically became a nonpaying bidder on the other set.

So my feeling is that some bidders actually think this is okay: I'll put my max bids on all of these cards that I want even though they are the same. If I win multiple ones, I'll pick the one that I like most, and then either retract my bids on the auctions for the same card still ongoing or become nonpaying bidders on those cards I don't want. Again, I have no real evidence of this, but seeing this post reminded me of that past incident for me.

I also bid quite a bit with PWCC and have a lot of respect for them. This kind of stuff is lunacy. How is e-bay allowing this person to still have an account? Sure, PWCC should block them, but why isn't e-bay doing something about this. Probation? 3 month suspension? Black star next to their name?

I review most of my auctions on PWCC. 99.9% of them I am very happy with. If there is someone like this over-bidding me, then I would personally send them an e-mail. Brent's group has always been very responsive.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet... but these threads and observations, though good in intent, do give a nice blue print for anyone who wants to actively scare bidders/competition away from a listing. Just sayin.

I've bought over a dozen items from PWCC and with exception of one, do not feel I've overpaid (often backed up by subsequent sales). Their service (especially packaging and responding to my questions/requests) has been great in my experience... and though I do not think for a second there is not at least some funny business that goes on within their offerings, I do not think this is unique to PWCC, Probstein. I'm sure it happens on many other consignment type sales (especially AH's that have been outed), and/or even when the seller is the card's owner.

Not sure what the solutions are, but I've got to think it would be difficult to monitor and then make decisions in real time (blocking bidders, etc) when you've got thousands of listings. I've never sold, so don't have the most informed POV. Seems it may be good if eBay were able to police this, perhaps in the form of warnings for excessive retractions, returns, non payments, and suspending bidders when it seems appropriate.

It has been happening for a long time already. A couple members have even admitted to doing it in the past.

My experiences with PWCC have generally been fine.

Reading all these posts I was intrigued enough to investigate the bidders who have now topped me on 4 pricey items in tonight's auction, including some Goudeys and Ruths.

The four sellers have bid on PWCC with 44%, 46%, 77% and 77% of their recent bids. And they each have many hundreds of feedbacks.

Am I accusing anyone of wrongdoing? No. Do these numbers strike me as a little peculiar? Yep they do. Are a lot of other quality sellers.

We can all speculate till the cows come home. I'm convinced that most of the shenanigans that go on are large sellers who agree among themselves that they'll list on well known web sites and then run each other's things up. You rub my back and I'll rub yours. And if you end up holding the bag when the music ends we'll make believe it never happened.

Interesting!

That is something I never considered happening, but it no doubt goes on, sadly. :(

well i did send brent a message via ebay questioning the underbidders behavior in one of his auctions...and his response was something like this:

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out. The high bidder is a highly reputable buyer
of ours. The under bidder who has placed a series of bids also has a
rather reasonable track record of buying quality sportscards, though
not with us. We don't think highly of these string bids where the bid
is consistently increased in small margins, but unfortunately this is
a behavior that members of the public seem to enjoy for one silly
reason or another (i.e. just enjoy the perceived competition and
hitting the 'bid' button repeatedly).

That said, we have searched the bidding on this item completely and
confirmed that everything is 100% legitimate and honest (albeit
somewhat eccentric).

I think this explains some of the very high prices on the higher profile cards.

I don't know about the particular auction but I have seen people do this in auctions I know for an absolute fact are clean.

It's hard to say how much of a factor bid % is although I completely agree that you cannot discount it. The reason I'm saying this is that on ebay these days, there are very few auctions that start from 99 cents anymore, and especially those that list quality items. PWCC is basically an event auction every month. I also consistently bid on Ruth and Gehrig cards, and to be honest, I bid on PWCC auctions every month. There is no other seller on ebay that I bid so consistently like this for, and I am sure there are others like me.

Well I got my card for $400 less than it sold for in last falls rea...I cannot complain...despite the unorthodox bidding techniques of some bidders.

So I missed out on one and got one but afraid I might have overpaid a little. Time will tell but it really sucks to bid then watch the bid run up to a dollar over your high bid and you not be able to counter bid. I'm thinking I just need to stick to straight sales.

Edit: After doing more research, I believe that I may have gotten a really good card and a very good price.

Not to get off topic, but when it was disclosed in a thread a few weeks ago that Heritage allows affiliates, employees, their friends, and relatives of employees ( are they affiliates) of Heritage to consign and bid on any of their items or others items (as long as they really wanted to purchase it, spooky how they know that), this board responded mostly with crickets and lets move to a different topic. Yet any questionable PWCC auction is automatically looked at with disdain and suspicion by some and maybe for good reason, not always sure why though.
Has anybody called Heritage and asked who the under-bidders were and if they were employees or friends/relatives they were bidding against when an auction didn't look just right to them? Did the respond? While it may be lawful to do it would make them look better to me if they stopped allowing that to happen like many other auction houses have.
I am wary of many auction houses and Ebay sellers thanks to this site and it has helped a lot with my collecting but don't understand some things.
Take care,
B1II d@na1ds@n

You make a good point, but the partial transparency eBay gives (while a whole lot worse than the transparency they used to give 15 years ago) still allows you to track some bidder history information. This partial look into the bidder's intention will spawn more questions than the zero bidder info you get from major auctionhouses.

See my thread on the Ed Killian that ended for an asinine $76 when it was miss-labeled. That's not a ridiculous price?

Glad the auction ended after midnight EST. Was asleep by 11 and saved myself a lot of money.

I reached the point quickly to go ahead and delete all my watched items so I wouldn't bid any more. I still have Heritage to contend with Sunday.

Bill,
I share your concern re Heritage, especially since there is an individual whom I believe is currently employed by Heritage who appears on the list of Legendary shill bidders that was recently released by the court. I do occasionally bid in Heritage auctions when there is something that I just gotta have, but I will not leave max bids.