Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
It does not excuse fraud, I agree, but at some point willing victims are complicit. Can one throw himself under a train and then fault the driver for not stopping?
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I don't think there are any proven auction houses that are shillers, just very strong suspects. If auction house X publicly said, "we shill and if you don't like it, don't bid w/ us," I'd bet a whole lot of buyers would boycott that auction house.
There's no question that shilling hurts buyers. It's amazing that intelligent people on the board don't care. In a way, I can see where these people are coming from. For example, there is a card X that someone wants, and the VCP for this card is $100. The buyer sets his snipe for $95. The seller shills the card to $93, and the buyer wins. Therefore, the buyer is thinking, not only did I buy the card for less than I valued it for, I bought it for less than VCP. I got a great deal, who cares if the card was shilled. However, if the card were not shilled, the buyer may have bought the card for $80. Therefore, the "VCP" for this card has been set to an artificially high level even w/ this sale of this card. If the buyer tries to sell this card at a later time, and does it through an honest auction, he may not get his $93 back. he may only get $80 this time, and naively think, "well, I only buy cards as a hobby and not an investment anyway, and I had $13 of fun when I owned the card, so who cares." And I believe that this is what Jeff means when he says that the shillers laugh their way to the bank when they hear this.