I've always thought of shill bidding by a consignor or auction house to be similar to an undisclosed reserve. The consignor maybe only wanted to sell it if it got to a certain price -- and if it doesn't, then you have an artificially high market value the next time you look to sell it.

Only way it would work is if the dealer was in on it and gave his blessing that he wouldn't try to collect on the items the consignor won.

I doubt Henry would risk his reputation for that type of arrangement.

Good point Dave. That buyer was a new ebay seller named; sharkbay545

Look him up. A strange guy. Ben and I have bought some photos from him 9he sells photos and books, and has only been selling since this last simmer. A strange fellow to say the least.

I encourage every one to look him up and see what he sells.

If Ben sees this comment, I'm sure he'll chime in...

I must leave to make a Doctors appoint now but will address him in more detail later this evening.

Every thing is not always the way it may appear to be.

I see shills drive people up to their maximums all the time. If they go too far, they just retract their last bid. I'm not suggesting that happened in these auctions, as I have no idea - but it's certainly not uncommon.

I didn't participate in the Yee auctions, but for the heck of it I just pulled up the eBay history on the top-selling Ruth/Gehrig photo. It appears only 2 bidders bid more than $495. It looks like the winner was top bidder at $500 with a few hours left in the auction, then someone put in 12 consecutive bids in $100-$300 increments in just 8 minutes, driving the winning bidder up to $3750. That could have been someone's perfectly legitimate approach to bidding - they could have kept telling themselves they could afford to go just a couple hundred bucks more, just a couple hundred more, gotta win, gotta win - but it's also what shilling consignors do. Keep bidding in small increments until the other bidder's max or near-max is exposed, then retract if you go past it, or don't pay if you accidently win; or drive the price up to what you're comfortable buying the piece back for and try again later.

Whichever kind of bidder this was, this situation is why I never put in a max bid until seconds before an auction close.

While I have only heard good things about Henry in the past, I do want to address a shill bidding point. Unfortunately, I think using eBay as a medium for the auctions may tend to make shill bidding easier to accomplish. If i'm to bid in REA for example, Rob would know all of my info as i had to register with him before being allowed to bid. In an eBay style auction such as this, I registered with eBay, not Henry. So, Henry doesn't really know who I am - just my eBay ID. Only eBay knows who I am. To me, this would seem to make shill bidding easier. In addition, the remedies to collect unpaid bids are probably fewer. Where Rob can bring NPB to court, Henry, I would imagine, would have a much tougher time accomplishing this.

With Ebay, you can't retract a bid if there is less than 12 hours to go. That is why I don't think that was a shill bidder. There is someone who bids on my auctions, and bids in 50 cent or $1 increments. He has multiple bids on my items, and to an untrained eye, it guess it could look like a shill bidder. But he always pays....just has a very unorthodox bid style....to each his own I guess......

I agree 100%.

Speaking purely from the standpoint of a buyer who knows what his maximum purchase price is, the only logical time to bid on any auction is with a few seconds remaining.

On ebay, this means that no one will have a chance to put in a higher bid after seeing mine, it also means that I won't be able to get "auction fever" and rebid if my max bid isn't high enough to top bids that are already entered.

On auctions with a moving end time, the logic is still pretty much the same.

Doug

I used to go to Antique auctions that were shilled, but I know Henry has a great reputation, and don't figure this is happening at all. Basically, people lose out, or get upset something goes too high, in their eyes, move on. There are about 2000 auctions per year it seems, w the big guys, and semi big guys, where you can get almost anything you want. Be patient and stop complaining constantly about losing out.

Keep in mind who the OP is. Every auction he has ever lost is because either the winning bidder, or the auction house, is stupid, crooked, or both.

I know a guy that bids like he shills all the time... he can't seem to lock in a maximum bid...he keeps changing his mind on something he wants...and bids small amounts hoping to get it cheap..when the price goes up..he gets nervous and starts bidding up.

As for H Yee auction...my first time....he was very courteous, friendly, informative and prompt to my query and am looking forward to participating in his future offerings...

There was some rather bizarre bidding going on. I don't know what you would call this, but it certainly wasn't shilling.

I put this item on my watch list, and at the time there was already 13 bids, but at the time was still only at $0.99. YES, all 13 bids were by the initial bidder.

I scratched my head and figured I have to go back afterwards to see what this bidder's strategy was. In all honesty, now that I can see the bid amounts placed, I still have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA!

1936 Original Photo CARL HUBBELL vs. RED RUFFING - W.S.
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=250739037562


Member Id: e***e( 81) US $22.50 Dec-14-10 18:56:51 PST
Member Id: n***s( 2027) US $22.00 Dec-14-10 13:56:39 PST
Member Id: .***m( 729) US $15.67 Dec-14-10 16:17:46 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.60 Dec-10-10 23:42:06 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.59 Dec-10-10 23:41:36 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.58 Dec-10-10 23:41:18 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.57 Dec-10-10 23:41:00 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.56 Dec-10-10 23:40:43 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.55 Dec-10-10 23:40:28 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.54 Dec-10-10 23:40:08 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.53 Dec-10-10 23:39:49 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.52 Dec-10-10 23:39:31 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.51 Dec-10-10 23:39:12 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.50 Dec-10-10 18:32:22 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $1.04 Dec-10-10 18:32:11 PST
Member Id: a***5( 123) US $0.99 Dec-10-10 18:31:46 PST
Starting Price US $0.99 Dec-07-10 18:56:57 PST

That's pretty funny. I can only guess that A***5 was hoping to scare potential bidders away, but also didn't want to spend more for the photo than for shipping.

Doug