Ot Troll, this is valid name!

Fixed it for you.

To be clear, BODA has confirmed what many of us already knew, and has perhaps shown the scope was even greater than we thought, but the alterations and the involvement of certain people is far from new.

Yes, I agree. They have uncovered an immense sea of altered cards and have proven that one way or another, these cards often make it into graded slabs. They've successfully informed us all that there are potential landmines in our playing field and to watch out. For that, I am grateful.

The issue I have are the conclusions drawn from there about who is guilty of what. So many of their accusations are built on false assumptions about the data they're looking at. Then they build on those invalid conclusions to make even more accusations. It's extremely irresponsible.

I totally disagree with this. Also, different auctioneers have different bidding rules and formats and call for different strategies. I bid multiple times on cards I really want and am really serious about all the time. In most auctions, I am worried about shill bidding and other shenanigans so I don't like to place my max bid until late.

In other instances or auctions formats, it behoves the bidder to put in a floor bid that is significantly higher than the next required step up in bidding to rule out a lot of non-serious buyers from being involved in the "extended bidding" period or whatever the auction house calls it.

The proposal you are talking about requires a lock-tight system where everyone is on the up and up - all other bidders, the auction house - everyone. That's not what we are faced with at all.

Lol. Yes. They probably do that daily, I would imagine.


I agree. They've definitely blown the lid on how widespread this issue is.

I’ve bid 10 or more times in plenty of auctions and on ebay. Why? Could be anything from I was bored, to I didn’t want to pay $2 more than the guy below me, to I wanted to see if the top bidder set an aggressive high bid, to I had too much wine to drink and it was 2 am and it was pointless fun. Can’t always tell why anyone is doing anything.

I wise man said to me a long time ago forget about deciphering someone else’s motivations. You are almost always just guessing based on your preexisting biases.

Nobodys shilling buy it nows


Just saying

There's no shortage of fake buy-it-now sales on ebay.

Call me out
 

eBay could consider calling out known shill bidders.
If shiller bids it shows *bidder has history of shill bidding.
Any new accounts they create tag would follow.
A fair buyer beware alert from eBay.

Shill bidders and pwcc should face long term suspension from eBay. Criminals only stop behavior when it is no longer tolerated. They rarely change behavior on their own.

Shill bidding is not okay. There is my disclaimer.

I know this is unpopular to say, but when I see an item on ebay, I decide what I will pay for it, and that is my limit. Whether I'm bidding against someone who, in their heart, wants to win it, or someone who doesn't, really makes not much difference. Of course I don't want a shiller bidding me up, but I'm not going to let him push me past my self imposed limit.

Now, if someone shilled me up to my max, placing a bid above mine, then cancelling that bid, then I would complain to ebay and not pay for the item on principle. That is something different than shill bidding.

I haven't seen anyone discuss the risk to the shill bidder. Don't some of these guys win stuff frequently enough to make it too risky for them? I mean, I hope that happens because it might tend to discourage the practice.

Making shillers pay for what they win is important and preventative. In fact, in a sense that makes them real bidders. Alas, not all auctioneers make them pay.

+1 Great comment. If shill bidders had to pay for items they win (plus BP of course) then that would make them actual bidders. So maybe the real problem is frequent non-paying winners, plus people who retract their bids often.

The most insidious shill bidders are the ones within or associated with AHs, who either know what other peoples' max bids are, or who have an arrangement with the AH, like the Mastro case. Because in those cases, the shills aren't running the risk of winning and paying; they are therefore not actual bidders.

agree as well i have said this for years. Just make people pay if they want to keep their cards, you are welcome too, just pay the bid you won and BP..no harm no foul...

Breaking news, maybe, I think, I found a PWCC auction, now freed from Mother Ebay, on Auction Report. If this is their much ballyhooed rollout of their independent platform, it is pathetic. Old holdouts from the vault and not much else. The other AH's must be laughing.

I wont even be signing up for the platform, better deals for you guys

I think you're on the wrong page? The one I'm seeing looks pretty epic. Over 42,000 cards listed in the auction in total. Everything starting out at $10. ~200 Mickey Mantles, ~1200 Michael Jordan, ~50 Babe Ruth, ~550 Lebron James, ~20 Ty Cobb, ~100 Willie Mays, ... There are a ton of great cards in this auction.

I think they’re going have Blowout reported sales on their auction.

Funny, gone are the days of not having more than one of each card per auction. Must be infinite demand

Some days you wonder, don't you, who is consigning all these cards, and who is buying them?

Should keep the BODA crew busy for the foreseeable future at least. I wonder if they're hiring?

People see the patterns they want to see or have already decided is the case. Whether it's politics, sports, covid, collecting, or anything else. Tell me what the facts and and I will tell you how they support my pre-existing thesis. And if they don't I will tell you which facts are wrong or who must be lying. Under no circumstances will I vary from my position. Because I am infallible and never wrong.

You too? I thought I was the only one!

+1. There is an entire psychology of and strategy to bidding in an auction and a lot of it is dependent on the rule structure of the auction. An auction with a fixed close time, no BP, and a very minimal increase for each bid (eBay) calls for an entirely different approach than one with prior bidding on an item to qualify for overtime, bid increments measured as a percentage of the last bid, and 20% BP, or one with fixed bid increments, a 'jungle' OT rule that lets you bid on anything, and a BP.

I find it fascinating from a game theory perspective. I enjoy the mathematical nature of game theory and solving for optimal strategies from a business perspective.

As a buyer on eBay, I will often place snipe bids on an item that far exceeds their market value just to ensure I win that item (although I'm selective about which auctions I employ this strategy on). Obviously, it comes with risk since if others utilize the same strategy, it can be costly. There are a few times where I've had to overpay for an item, but surprisingly, it's an extremely rare occurrence (probably somewhere between 1-3% of the time). There are also a few times where my bid has cost someone else with the same strategy a lot of money. It also leaves me open to getting shilled, but as you may have noticed from some of my other posts, I believe this is nearly a non-factor, but that's a topic for a different thread.

From the auction house's perspective though, I think the extended bidding framework yields higher closing prices than the snipe-heavy environment that eBay unintentionally created. Nowadays, eBay is effectively a silent auction site with the vast majority of sports card auctions being won by hidden snipe bids within the final few seconds of an auction.

I also think the buyer's premium aspect is an interesting game theory problem. I think initially, buyer's premiums were introduced as the fee that an auction house would charge for selling an item, but in addition, it has since evolved into an illusion aimed at getting people to bid higher because they prey on people's inability to do math. This is evidenced by the fact that some auction houses will charge a 20% buyer's premium but then turn around and give half of that fee back to the consigner. So it's not just a fee for the auction house, it's a way to trick buyers into bidding higher than they otherwise would have.

Another intersting game theory problem is that of bidding increment options for the buyer. Some auction houses will allow you to bid in $100 or $250 increments when the current bid is $6,000, whereas the next minimum bid at another auction site is in $1000 increments, forcing you to bid $7,000. This is a double edged sword though, because while you may push the item price higher with larger bid increments, it also comes with the consequence of creating a smaller pool of total bidders who can participate in the extended bidding period because an item might get close to it's full market value after just a handful of bids are placed, causing would-be participants to bow out of the auction before it enters extended bidding. I actually use this strategically to my advantage in the early stages of an auciton if it's an item that I really want. Bidders will often just place one bid on an item in the early stages as a way to sort of bookmark them for the extended bidding period, and not place another bid until the "real" auction begins. But this strategy allows room for more extended bidding participants. Whereas if two people "go at it", bidding each other up back and forth in the early stages, until the item is near its full market value, then it discourages other people from participating in extended bidding. Thus, once the extended bidding session begins, I might only be competing against one or two other bidders instead of 10 or 15.

I'm a game theory nerd, so I could go on about this stuff for hours, but I think this post is long enough already lol.

Travis, many thanks. Must have somehow arrived on their vault release page. Don't ask me how. Could you kindly send me a link so I can at least have a look at these goodies and pricing so far. Thanks, John

Confirmation bias is everywhere. And don't forget medicine.

The weakness of game theory alone (I was a big game theory guy in college in poli sci) is that it assumes a rational and calculating player who will act logically and in his own best interests. People, however, have psychological tendencies and prejudices that are irrational and do not factor into a logical game theory, like a tendency to prefer round numbers (why is 3000 hits so acclaimed versus 2900 hits? because people like round numbers), make groups of non-related items, or lack of ability to solve a multiple-variable equation. Even calculating a percentage increase with a corresponding BP increase (which is really just a multiple-step multiplication problem) puts half the population into the fetal position. i think the more complex bidding rules can even cause the more math-challenged to bid higher because they can't really solve the problem of what they are going to pay.

i don't think some of the AHs do a good job of understanding their bidders' psychology. For example, if a certain % of your customers have to stay in budget, it means that they may be knocked out of some items in OT by deep pocketed players. If every auction has a 'jungle' OT where anyone who has bid on anything can bid on everything, then everyone who has to watch a budget can reallocate their resources to secondary or tertiary items, especially items that close with no bids. I am always stunned that items with no bids close at the end of regular time. Why not leave them up so people who lose on a bunch of other stuff can bid on them rather than passing the lot?

Trust me as one of the younger auction houses around we considered EVERYTHING. Ultimately we decided that the long game was to keep buyers happy, and that in turn would make consignors happy. Buyers did not like being up until 4am or later on the east coast. Also if you start all your items at low prices instead of 50% of retail, and don't have any reserves, you'll have a lot less no sales. I know we run under 1% Of course we're a pimple on the ass of the hobby compared to the big houses, but we ARE growing fairly quickly and like I said, we're in it for the long haul.

Does anyone else find this to be stunningly excessive for one auction? There are many copies of a large number of high profile cards, almost impossible not to be with 42,000+ cards up for auction at one time. This looks more like an inventory liquidation to me than a monthly auction.

EDIT to add that I was referring to the 42,000 cards total. The pre-war selection is a tiny fraction of that and doesn't appear to be much more than what we've seen from plenty of other AHs, if even that.

They'll find buyers for them all and set more records.


Not long ago auctions would refuse more than one copy of a card. I wouldn't want a competing copy of my consignment.

It doesn't strike me as being that much of an outlier when you compare it to their standard monthly ebay auction volume. I think they did something like 35,000 cards in their final month on eBay. And it's been a couple months since they were booted off the platform, so they likely had a backlog of sales stacking up. If you combine their expected eBay volume for the past 2 months, assuming they were still there, that's probably ~70,000 cards. It seems realistic to me that they could have lost ~28,000 of those ~70,000 sales because of the ebay fallout, owning them with 42,000 cards to sell. I'd be surprised though if they have more than 42,000 next month though. I'd guess it will be closer to 30,000 next month. Although surely it'll depend on how well they do in this one.

That and whether the postal inspectors and FBI show up to padlock the doors.

PWCC certainly isn't alone in dong this.

Mark, I do the exact same thing on eBay. I was informed earlier in this thread that I was an enabler. It was funny then, and still is.

I set my max and I either win it or I don’t. Either way, this method works for me. And I do not care who does what from a bidding perspective. I win it or I don’t… and the caravan moves on.

Following up on the number of listings in PWCC's monthly auctions. It looks like they have 23,717 cards listed this month for their November auction. They had about 42,000 in October, which included some amount of backlog after being offline for a couple months. It'll be interesting to see how things trend from here. I think watching the number of cards they get going forward over the next 6 months will be critical to their success or failure as an independent platform. Can they still realize strong prices on their own? They certainly did with some cards, but there were also plenty of bargains to be had as well. Although despite the conspiracy theories, the same was actually true for them on eBay. I've been building a sales history database for vintage basketball cards and you'd be surprised how many of the outlier sales, on the low end, came from PWCC listings.

It's possible that this current month still has some amount of backlog in it. Also, I'm not sure how much seasonal effect there is in the expected monthly volume (what does a "normal" November or December look like for them historically?). I would anticipate their expected volume going forward to continue to be in the low 20,000s though each month. It might dip into the high teens if some of this ~24,000 still has some backlog in it though. But if we see it dip below 15,000, then that will be indicative of PWCC struggling on their new platform, and if we see it back up above 30,000, then that will be a sign that the hobby is latching on to them as a viable alternative to eBay and other consignment options. As a data geek, those are the two magic numbers I'd be watching out for (15,000 and 30,000 listings per month).

Grabbing my popcorn...

A closer look through some of the listings for this month leads me to believe that PWCC is likely seeing some significant withdrawal from their usual consignment base. The offerings for Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Zion Williamson, Luka Doncic, and other big-name stars are fairly lackluster this month. It appears as though much of the good stuff may have begun to migrate elsewhere.

Oh, and for your enjoyment. I found this fun little description for a Goudey Ruth...

And I wonder if some of the most recent offerings perhaps came from a backlog of pre-ebay split consignments that just hadn't been listed yet?

WOW so as Robert wrote from our World Series NFT Thread

I'm saving my money for some Nike nft's. I want to be wearing a nice pair of Jordans as I jog thru the metaverse

Now as he Jogs thru the Metaverse he can Imagine seeing it in your PWCC Vault every day

Lol.

What do you guys think the over/under should be for how long it takes PWCC to mint their first batch of NFTs? I bet Brent is researching how to do it right now.

Can one trim or recolor an NFT?:eek: