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Old 02-18-2017, 08:02 AM
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David R@tliff
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Texas
Posts: 603
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JustinD View Post
I was asking for clarity, I don't have it.

"Some call it "shill bidding". Others call it "pushing/protecting". Regardless of what you call it, as long as you pay for what you win, and it wasn't yours to begin with, that's all it is............complaining about not letting someone steal a card way under value. As someone with millions at stake in this hobby, I'm not going to let a card go a dime under its value which is the reason that I have so many duplicates of high end cards."

The last sentence certainly calls question. Were cards shilled or "pushed" to amounts that protected or built investment? Whether they are his or someone else's, was bidding manipulated to get top dollar? Was this done with his listings?

It was an open question.

We started with a thread of possibility of wrongdoing, my only gripe was that guilt was assumed without corroboration. This sounds like a bit of admittance to me and just wanted some background on who had the correct interpretation.
I think this was the sequence. Courtney bought the card from PWCC at the 2015 (or 2016, can't remember?) National in it's PSA 7 form, and subsequently consigned it to Goldin where it sold to someone else in Sept/Oct 2016, at a loss to Courtney. That buyer subsequently consigned it to PWCC and Courtney started bidding again as the price had not surpassed the Goldin sale price. He didn't own the card when it was consigned back to PWCC, but was bidding to potentially win it back.

As far as "defending" prices, I will give a personal example as I think this is what he probably means. There are about 8-10 cards that I currently or have previously owned, and any time another one is put for auction I almost always drop in a "minimum" bid which effectively sets a "floor" for that card generically. If no one outbids me at that level, I'm happy to own another copy but I don't necessarily expect to win every time I put in a bid. However, I certainly do stand ready to pay should I win.

I expect most people would describe that as "defending" certain price levels of cards, but I wouldn't expect that to be considered negative. However, if a group of collectors got together and were to engage in this sort of "defensive" bidding with the cards just changing hands between the group, I can certainly see how that would be viewed differently.

To be clear, I am not part of the "buyers group", as far as I know!