This might be the most obvious shill bidder ever. I won thse two auctions below, a Cobb Postaco stamp and a Cobb German Transfer:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=260530226974
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=250555637841
After winning the auctions I checked out the bidding history and noticed an underbidder who had a feedback rating of 118 but with only 9 auctions bid on in the past 30 days --
but all, 100%, with this seller. And the cards this underbidder bid on were pretty diverse: graded prewar baseball cards, autographed postwar baseball cards and even boxing autographs....but no graded prewar baseball cards, autographed postwar baseball or boxing autographs with any other seller. Not surprisingly, this underbidder never won any of the 9 auctions he bid on the seller's, he only served to drive the final price up.
So I emailed the seller after receiving the cards and he/she responded in part as follows:
"We were very surprised to receive this email as we have succesfully (sic) completed transactions in the past.
If you look into the History of this piece on Vintage Card prices you can see we actually took a decent loss on the card from where we bought it at Auction."
Basically telling me that since they lost money on the card I shouldn't be upset that they shill bid it up $131. No denial of shill bidding, of course. They also promised to work with ebay to get the negative feedback removed; ebay will no doubt comply despite the most brazen shill bidding on ebay I've just about ever seen.