Thank you Rick. I will take you at your word. I have bought from you in the past both on EBAY and in person. I do however find many of the bids on many of your auctions suspicious and I cited several of those in a past post. However, I will take you at your word.

How about the monster Super Bowl auto book that has sold 3 times, won by the same bid
 

hello, here we go again, another moron making an accusations,
==> a) we leave feedback for every buyer, take a look, its 3 unique buyers, and yes, I have 20 of these, I bought the remaining inventory....

if you have enough keyboard strength to trash me, go take 5 minutes and you'll see its 3 different winners...

I own 20 of these...

The 1975 Topps Nolan Ryan PSA 8 with a monster stain that has been sold at least 3 ti
 

once more, this card was sold 3 times and returned 3 times , to 3 different winners...returned each time, cause people thought the card was misgraded ( which it was )

go research my feedbacks and you'll see its 3 different winners....

you think I'm shilling a nolan ryan psa 8...

I'm a nice guy, but get bent, your way off base

High five. Lay down the law. :cool: Also I will be back later to post the examples I mentioned earlier. I will show both ends of the spectrum as well. (I've gotten $300 on a lot where one ended $2000 the week before)

It's funny how every single thread on PSA exposing Rick has been deleted. Real forums may lock the thread but never delete them. Guess it's to hide full transparency.

You own 20 of them that are all numbered 171/400?

To me, this is an interesting quote. Don't you think getting a few bid retractions a day is an issue? That's not prevalant? I don't care how many items a seller is selling. Bid retractions should be rare, not the norm.

Here are the only instances where ebay allows legitimate bid retractions.

You accidentally entered the wrong bid amount due to a typographical error. For example, you bid $99.50 instead of $9.95. If this happens, you need to reenter the correct bid amount right away. Changing your mind does not qualify as accidentally entering a wrong bid amount.

The item's description changed significantly after you entered your last bid. For example, the seller updated details about the item's features or condition.

You can't reach the seller by telephone or email.

There should never be large number of bid retractions for any seller's items. If I had one person retract a bid, I would probably be asking them why. Let alone "a few a day".

I've been away from the boards for an extended period (back to school), but I've been checking in the past few weeks to catch up. A couple of notes:

1. I've purchased from Rick before in the past. No complaints. Nothing I have read here would persuade me from not bidding in future auctions.

2. Someone once taught me to never bid more than you are willing to pay. Anything less is icing.

3. Shilling is an evil of the market we frequent, but implying that Rick is root cause, agent of, or enabler of it is grossly inaccurate.

Since an ebay seller cannot see a max bid it is impossible to shill in the strictest sense of the word namely placing a bid forvthe purpose of bumping up the high bid. This leaves two other practices to discuss. One is bidding up incrementally until the high bidder is topped then retracting. This is clearly wrong and should not be tolerated. The second is placement of a safety bid by the consignor or a proxy which to me is akin to a hidden reserve and next to impossible to police. It might be cleaner if there was a reserve but i wont fret it.

Probstein
 

I recently consigned about 40 cards to Rick, including 25 midgrade T202's, that ended on 1/27. One buyer won three cards (paying $82, $82 and $51.66)and immediately relisted them for auction. The auction ended on 2/11 and sold for $76, $90 and $64.75. This gave him a profit of $15.09 before ebay fees.

Don't know that this really adds anything to the discussion, other than Rick doesn't always get the highest prices, just thought i would add my experience with Rick. I did not bid on my own items and based on the prices i don't think anyone ran the prices up higher than what these cards normally sell for.

Stuart

Feel free to go through Rick's feedback and look at bid history on any random auction over $100. Most have at least one bidder with 10-15 bid retractions in last 6 months with a high percentage of Rick's auctions bid on.

In 12 years on eBay I have had a total of 2 retractions.

Could you come up with a different word for "safety bid"? Starting a .99 "no reserve" auction then placing a "safety bid" is a f---ing scumbag move and doesn't deserve such a cute name.

Rick, I think the reality is that once people consign something to you, they can then bid on it via themselves (or if you actually monitor that) via proxy.

Now at least on ebay people can semi-see who is bidding, analyze patterns, and try and sniff out the shills.

The reason why AHs offebay don't allow any transparency is because this same thing would happen, people would see some funny business and then call it out.

I submit that it's actually a good thing that people are as vigilante as they are with your auctions, and frankly I wish ebay would have FULL transparency like they used to.

The way things are now, I think it's up to the masses to police auctions they are interested in and to speak out if something seems off. Rick can't do that himself, and I don't think it's fair to expect that he does.

Furthermore, I think it's commendable that Rick takes the time to actually post on these forums and react to the concerns of people. That's more than many other big time sellers do, and I think it speaks volumes to his credibility and willingness to keep things as clean as he can.

Member since: Jan-09-04 0 bid retractions

Shilling
 

For what it's worth, the thread I started back in late December titled "Bidding on your own auction" (regarding a 1914 CJ) was raising the question of a card that was purchased approximately 10 days earlier, consigned, relisted in one of Rick's auctions and then the original buyer was bidding it up. I questioned the card buyer/consignors motive, not Rick. I would have questioned this in anyone's auction.

The original winner/re-bidder did not win the card, I don't recall if it sold for more than the current market average .. and that, obviously, was not my point.

Rick and I have since spoken and cleared up any questions surrounding.

I've bought between 5-10 items from this seller and have been very happy with each transaction (great clear scans, nice cards, really fast shipping).. none of which went above what I considered market value. Without getting into whole topic of shilling, spotting it, obligation to police, etc, I completely agree with the above.

PS- haven't taken time to wade through all the posts yet, but just my opinion

You own 20 of them that are all numbered 171/400?
 

You own 20 of them that are all numbered 171/400?

==> we used the same listing for each one....
it takes 90 minutes to repack them once opened....
we own 20 of the 400 but I don't know which number we have of each....
buyers don't care either....they just want the piece...I'm not spending 90 minutes each on 20 pieces just so we can state 171/400 , 185/400 , etc...

these things are 82 pounds and are one huge paint in the but to ship....

you'll notice our listing on ebay has /400
http://www.ebay.com/itm/XL-Super-Bow...item53f44c6037

Ran through my invoices really quick---

Here are both sides of my pricing anomalies from items listed with Rick:

67 Set partially graded, expected $2200 sold $3k
56 near set, expecting $900 sold $1300
55 Bowman Starter expecting $500 sold $860
64 Topps Standup lot expecting $200 sold $460
Lebron Quad Auto expecting $600 sold $355
Joe Montana PSA/DNA RC expecting $250 sold $104
Al Leiter Autograph expecting $15 sold $56
Silver Ring, was expecting $20 got $91
Large amount of mid condition raw stars that sold on average 40% higher than expecting (about 80 cards)
I got absolutely killed on a large modern lot, many BGS 9.5's and 10 pristines I was expecting $15-$30 each sold for $2-$5 (had 40 cards sell for under $15)
1880's Sporting Life's, expecting $50-$75/card sold for $140-$180 each
1880's Peck & Snyder expecting $75-$100/card sold for $50-$60
55 Bowman starter set, expecting $400 sold $102 (Edit - this is a different listing than the other starter)
150~ 1960 PSA cards was expecting $800 out of the lot sold for over $1200
2x Mike Trout logo patch autos, expecting $600-$800 per, sold for $300-$350 each
1940 Superman Gum /w card #1 expecting $2000, sold $395
National Chicle Skybirds Expecting $80, sold $200

My personal experience-

Purchased over 2000 items on ebay- 0 retractions

Sold over 3000 items on ebay- 0 retractions

Why not? No one would really think to look at those people. Then when they do all of a sudden it becomes apparent there might be issues. The fact they they continue and the seller denies any knowledge is BS.

I think the guy sells loads of hard to find stuff...and prices arent bad....Ive never had any issues bidding or buying thru ebay with him

RalG

I still don't believe that ball sold for $12,000. The person had 8 feedback and only bid with you.

Really Paul??? This is the first thread he has posted on actually trying to defend himself. There has been numerous of them also. I think all this constant attention has started to hurt business a bit and he's trying to save face. Problem is you can't deny that any bidder with 48% and 108 retractions is not up to something.

I have purchased from the Rick in the past and not had any problems. I will say that I feel some cards could have gone cheaper but I paid what I wanted to get them. I stopped bidding with him after noticing some issues like what we are discussing. I never said a word, but with all this and the blatant disregard till now I will say I won't ever buy via ebay from him. I am sure he won't want my business at a show either and so be it then. More $ for the next guy:D

Hi Stuart, It adds a lot to the discussion. I'm assuming you paid Rick something to consign your cards. It sounds like you didn't do so well overall (you could have gotten higher prices - plus covered the consignment fees - by selling them yourself), right? So, given that you didn't do so well, I guess you won't be consigning through Rick in the future, right?

Andrew- I am sure that Rick will not lose any sleep tonite after reading your post.....

Well, first what I am saying is that at least he's communicating. I know other sellers wouldn't even dare try to tread these waters regardless of how the negativity might be effecting their business.

As for the shilling, yes if there is nefarious business going on that is brought to his attention he should certainly take it seriously.

It can't be expected, however, that he will police every single auction. That's why, like I said, it's up to those interested in his items to do some detective work themselves, and then when they have reason to be suspicious, to bring it up with Rick in a professional manner.

I think you and I are on the same page, but it's about everyone working together, not just placing the blame and responsibility on one man's shoulders.

Probably not and neither will I.

Kevin at least your high end PSA cards warrant close to or at the grades given.

Perhaps you've forgotten the rules here Steve, but this is N54; you can't go around just making logical, well-reasoned, polite posts. What if we all did that???

Paul, I have no idea if anyone's shilling Rick's auctions, and I'm not going to waste my time analyzing all this crap, but....

If a seller is running a crooked business (shilling his own auctions), then if you politely contact him to report "nefarious activity", how do you expect him to respond?

Stop typing, it was a rhetorical question - here's the answer: if an ebay business is shilling and you bring it to their attention, they will deny it. If you report it to ebay, ebay will do nothing, as any action on their part impacts their profit. If you talk about it here, again - nothing will happen because if you cost the seller business through not participating in his auctions, he will simply up his shilling to make up for the lost revenue.

Give it up - go play in the Mastro thread.

Care to address my post from earlier?

Well Scott you're clearly not trying to actually solve anything here, you just sound like an angry person lashing out at the hot topic of the day.

There is plenty that can be done about bad things, but having a defeatist attitude like you seem to have doesn't help. When you start to make clearly irrational arguments, it also makes you look foolish and you lose credibility.

So, if you're actually trying to help, then by all means ... otherwise, stand aside and let the adults get to work.

Paul, look in a mirror and read what you just wrote, but remove the name "Scott". You might learn something.

LOL - the old "look in the mirror" comment? Good one!

With originality and intelligence like that you'll go far buddy!

+1 ... especially considering all the constructive comments and questions that get ignored when talking about ebay. So to reiterate:

Step 1 (as to ebay) - Make bid retractions go through customer service. No one should be able to have 108 bid retractions.

Paul,

I've provided a rebuttal to your argument twice in this thread, and both times you have ignored it. For someone who claims to be an adult who solves problems, you seem to have an amazing capacity to ignore any countervailing argument.

Don't take it personally my friend. I don't always see everything everyone writes.

Per your comment, if you don't want to pay an AH there's nothing they can do other than cancel your account and threat to sue which will only make sense at a certain threshold.

I agree that the bidding retracting policy is rather garbage on ebay, but they do have semi-transparency. I much prefer that to the zero transparency that offbay AHs have.

Ideally, the buyer would have to go through a more stringent process to retract bids, as you suggest - and there would be more sever consequences for nefarious behavior such as a clear pattern of bid retraction to shill items.

There is room for improvement everywhere, and part of the responsibility falls on us bringing it to the attention of those who can actually do something about it.

Probstein
 

Scott-

Yes, Rick got a consignment fee. Some of the cards i consigned went for less than i hoped but a few went for more. Overall, i'm okay with what i cleared. I realize that i might be able get more if i sold them myself but there are several reasons i chose to consign - the time involved to list which i guess could be considered lazy but the main reason is not wanting to deal with scammers and ebays policies of always taking the buyers side. I also feel Rick gets more interest in his bids then i would.

I have sold a few things lately on the BST, i could be naive but i feel it is a safe option. Most of the things i have sold this way have sold very quickly though so i feel i might have listed too low and left money on the table, something a auction format might have avoided. I have consigned some cards to Sterling for their next auction hoping to see if the result are better.

Would i consign to Rick again? I'm not sure, but if i don't it will be because i found a more profitable alternative not because i don't trust him.

I know you trust him - you made that clear in your previous post. I was just curious if you did okay overall. My guess was that you did, but you started your post by giving examples of how you didn't.

Can somebody send me a PM when this Paul guy has either left the board, or doesn't post that often anymore? Seriously I don't even want to come on and read this forum anymore. I used to come here to read about vintage baseball cards, but all I have seen for the last 2 weeks is an endless tirade from a broken record going on and on about auction houses. Sick of it.

"otherwise, stand aside and let the adults get to work."

Whatever, dude. You're the least grown up person here.

Probstein
 

Scott-

I decided to sell things that were extra or no longer fit what i collected. I had heard good things/success stories about Rick on the CU forums so i gave it a shot.

I did feel that Ricks auctions got more attention and interest than others. However looking back at the 3 auctions that were bought and resold within a 2week period i noticed that one person won 2 of them and didn't even bid in Rick's auction 2 weeks prior. Maybe this person didn't see Ricks auction, wasn't intersted in the cards at the time or just didn't want to deal with Rick. I don't know but seems odd, does prove to me that Rick will not always get the best return.

I have consigned with Rick several times and have had the pleasure of meeting him at a couple of the National Conventions. I have never had any issues at all. He does a great job of listing the items, pays out quickly, and most importantly he takes the time to actually communicate with you. He is a class act in my book.

"I did feel that Ricks auctions got more attention and interest than others."

Okay, now I understand. Thank you.

I've bought many cards from Rick and will continue to do so.
 

I never bid. I snipe the item with my best price in the last few seconds. Doesn't that provide the greatest deterent to shill bidding?

Yes, as long as your best priced isn't based on impressions gathered from shilled auctions.

And you can only do this on ebay.

Paul do you prefer purchasing your cards on Ebay or through Auction Houses? I'm asking on behalf of the rest of the forum members because I'm not quite sure that we all understand where you stand on this matter........LOL

Random card break. Just grabbed the first scan I saw.:D

Attachment 87788

stop !
 

Hey,
stop ruining the real good" senseless arguement" groove that we got going here... with something so off base as a post of a baseball card !

Silly me:eek:

I appreciate Rick answering earlier in the thread. I have bought from him before and I will again. He's right, a big dog in the industry gets the big target.

Rich

+ 1