shill bidders?

[ajjohnsonsoxfan]

Just won this 1914 Cracker Jack Joe Wood SGC A from Probstein123. I had read on this board that some suspected of shill bidding so I wanted to test it out. I had the high bid for the most of the auction at $278 and then two suspect bidders appeared in the last minute and systematically bid up the price by $10 increments, so I increased my bid to $500 to see how far they would go. It was like a bot was bidding until the auction ended creeping the price up in small increments until the auction ended at $395. Does anyone recognized these ebay users? i***u ( private ) and t***e .

for t***e his history reads:
30-Day Summary
Total bids: 27
Items bid on: 4
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 59%
Bid retractions: 0
Bid retractions (6 months): 0

for i***u

30-Day Summary
Total bids: 20
Items bid on: 20
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 35%
Bid retractions: 0
Bid retractions (6 months): 1

I think it's strange that someone would have that high of a bidding % with one seller. Either there's a small team of people with multiple ebay account systematically bidding up these auctions or there's "bots" that are programmed to do so. It was only a $120 raise for this particular auction but that adds up to big time $$$ spread out over hundreds or thousands of auctions over time.

[D. Bergin]

Sorry, I don't see it. Most every item on Ebay is bid up in small increments nowadays. Especially with the quick bid again button Ebay has now.

Percentages are not unusual, they are only 30 day summaries.

[MattyC]

A+ for effort but no conspiracy there. Wish I had the free time to dig like that and even post the screen cap to boot.

[vintagehofrookies]

its well known that probsteins auctions are shilled. I just have a max price and put that in with 3 sec. left and if I win good, if not then whatever. the worst thing that you can do is put in a bid with any time left which would give the shills enough time to jack your bid up. I always bid with extreme caution on auctions that are sold on consignment.

[jhs5120]

Originally Posted by vintagehofrookies

its well known that probsteins auctions are shilled.

Is it?

[vintagehofrookies]

it is on BO, FCB + CU forums