This explains a lot. Thanks

Prior discussion of whether some string bidding is shilling or not.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...hlight=pushing

I still don't get it. Who is the croooked string bidder? Is he a friend of the guy who consigned the item? Is he the seller himself? And why does he care so much about 85 cents in the above example if he's spending over 1000 on a card?

If someone bids $1000 on an item but puts a max bid of $1200, who cares if that gab is closed in $1 intervals or $100.

I'm nowhere near smart enough to make sense of this.

Thread Peter posted was useful.

The reason tiny incremental bids is worse is because the string bidder can "find out" where the max bid is without exceeding it. In your example, the shill bidder has no idea that the max is $1200, so they would rather bid it up at the smallest increment in hopes of finding the max than just bid $1100 and risk becoming high bidder because the previous max was only $1050.

Agreed. This is a significant change that many members here have been suggesting for quite a while. The fact that those who retract bids in pwcc auctions will be banned from their auctions and Ebay all together should go a long way towards improving auction integrity. I think this is a great step and hope to see others follow.

Not likely. According to eBay, you cannot bid a dollar increment on a $1200 item. That requires a $25 increment. A buck will only get you to $99.

A big +1!

Thanks,

Larry

The only thing that makes any sense is the idea posted in the string Peter cited: someone is trying to run the price up - but not win it - because they have the same card and are in effect trying to protect their investment buy making sure a card doesn't sell for too low a price. If I paid 160,000 for a Rose rookie card, I might be a little concerned if one was about to close at 90,000. So I pump the gas a little hoping to move up the price, not really hoping to be the buyer at the end of the day. Still think this is a dangerous strategy if you don't really want the cRd, particularly at AHs with a 10% step up on bids. Of course if you are a real dirt bag you just renege on the deal f you are accidentally the winner and don't pay at all. Or use 1 of your 25 retractions.

There is no visibility into auctions that don't get paid for. There never has been in AHs (except when you see the same card available for less within a week LOL). On ebay, there isn't any now, particularly with the removal of IDs and the inability of a seller to leave negative feedback.

Which leads us to the real strategy of the buyers group. Pump up a bunch of high end vintage cards to 3-6X average price through string bidding or shilling, while never paying for the cards and retracting all those bids. Watch VCP swallow the data and recalculate inordinately high average prices; then sell your own supply that you bought last year at the new fictitious VCP average.


IMO, the real issue here is VCP needs to find a way to eliminate any auction that hasn't been completed (paid for). Start with ebay, then go from there to AH's. I know easier said than done, but maybe ebay and VCP can partner up.

I am sure this has happened, I'd be surprised if it was an epidemic. Have to say the recent machinations around that Rose rookie card have been interesting to say the least.

In a few short months we've gone from a cabal of filthy rich hedge fund guys who don't care about how much money they spend on anything, to what sounds like a sophisticated group of criminals intent on rigging the auction market and third tracking party tracking services. Maybe a third theory will surface before long.

Wherever there is big money there is fraud. You can count on that.

Lets don't forget, a few who have committed fraud are wearing jumpsuits in prison right about now. I wish more fraudsters, especially Peter Nash., were there too.....

suggestion on how to improve pwcc's proposed change
 

nice to see the large amount of responses to the pwcc new policy, especially in light of the bid retraction issue was something i proposed a change in recently and the response from board members was mixed: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=224524

i started that post after a conversation with brent highlighting this issue and learned that they had policy changes in process. now that we see the culmination of this process, a couple of thoughts on how to improve it:

1) a starting point of 25 bid retractions on the ebay platform over the last 6 months is much too high imo. an ending point of potentially 5 is also too high. i have read the posts on legitimate bid retractions and find all of them underwhelming. i would suggest starting with 4 as a trial balloon and within a few months at most ending with 2. the actual number is less relevant, thankfully, if the first part of the policy change is rigidly enforced -- if someone has 2 bid retractions on pwcc's site the user's account will be suspended from further bidding on their site.

2) string bidding does not bother me because every bid the user makes could be the winning bid...unless they retract the bid. the intention of the bid is not very relevant to me as long as the user is willing to pay the bid price. no one can police intentions. we can police non-payments/bid retractions. what's relevant for all of us is that a "real" market price is reflected by their bid given the expectation they maintain the bid and pay for the item if they win!

i think this is a very good start from pwcc, would just like to see more teeth on the bid retraction number and reconsidering string bidding.

Thanks for the Feedback and Questions
 

Thank you all for your thoughts, comments, and questions. I have been closely watching your reactions to our original post and I’m replying now to answer the questions that were raised. This will be our last post on this thread. If you have further questions, or have feedback you’d like to share, please send an email directly to me (betsy@pwccauctions.com) or to our bid monitoring email address (bidmonitoring@pwccauctions.com).

Questions concerning our ability to enforce our Bid Retraction Policy

Retractions on PWCC items:

Just like other sellers on eBay, we are notified real-time when a bid is retracted on our auctions. We review the issue and take action daily.

• First Offense: When a bidder retracts their first bid with PWCC, we report it and a warning is issued by eBay.
• Second Offense: Should a second retraction occur on our account, that bidder will have their bidding privileges revoked by eBay for a period of 14 days.
• Third Offense: Should a third retraction occur on our account, that bidder will have their account suspended by eBay.

Total number of bid retractions eBay-wide:

For each occurrence of a bid retraction, as well as through various spot checks of our listings, we take note of the total number of bid retractions that a particular user ID has on their account eBay-wide. We take action based on the following approach:

• When a bidder has between 0-9 bid retractions in the last six months, we log When a bidder has between 10-24 bid retractions in the last six months, we send a warning message outlining the fact that bidders who show 25+ bid retractions in the last six months will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions
• When a bidder has 25 or more bid retractions in the last six months, we block that user ID from participating in PWCC auctions

As pointed out by many of you, 25 is indeed a very high number of bid retractions to be considered reasonable in a six-month period. It stands to reason that any bidder who is bidding with discipline and control should have very few justifiable retractions. Brent and I put great consideration on how we would roll out this process. Truly, if we placed the threshold at something lower like 10 or 5, we feared it would be too much of a drastic change. Ultimately, our goal is not to punish bidders, but rather to inform users of the rules as we believe in due time bid retractions will diminish.

We are starting with 25 as the threshold to help get the word out. Starting in Q1 2017 it will be reduced to 10, and later in 2017 it may be reduced to 5.

Questions about the definition of String Bidding:

As highlighted by many of you, simply placing a series of sequential bids is not string bidding. We understand the logistics of bidding on eBay, particularly using eBay’s app which actually makes it easiest to place minimum bids, and we understand that many bidders place a series of sequential bids for completely legitimate reasons.

Here’s why placing a series of bids at the minimum bid increment can be problematic:

Let's assume there are two bidders interested in a listing. Bidder A is the high bidder at $6,000, but has a maximum bid of $7350. Bidder B places a bid of $6,100, and eBay raises the bid to $6,200. Bidder B bids $6,300 and eBay raises the bid to $6,400, and so on. Finally, when Bidder B bids $7,300, eBay raises the bid to $7,350 (not $7,400) thereby ‘outing’ bidder A’s max bid. This essentially allowed Bidder B to increase the bidding to Bidder A’s max bid while greatly reducing the likelihood that they became the high bidder themselves (50/50 odds). We will remain patient on this topic as it’s NOT our primary concern (bid retractions and unpaid items are far larger issues), but we do hope to limit string bidding and will contact users who seem to employ this behavior.

Two important notes:

1. Most troubling is when there is an instance of string bidding paired with a bid retraction. A bidder that engages in this behavior has and will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions and will be reported to eBay. We have a zero tolerance on obviously manipulative behavior and string bidding paired with a retraction is considered highly manipulative.

2. String bidding which ultimately results in that user ID becoming the high bidder (eventually) will not be flagged by PWCC as this clearly suggests that the string bidder has real intention to win the item.

Since implementing our policies here are some statistics:

• PWCC has blocked 92 user IDs for having 25+ bid retractions in the last six months and contacted those bidders in hopes they will refrain from retracting bids moving forward
• PWCC has reached out to 62 user IDs for having between 10-24 bid retractions in the last six months
• PWCC has reached out to 54 user IDs to explain our position on string bidding
• PWCC has blocked 16 user IDs due to malicious string bidding combined with a retraction
• eBay has sent warning messages to 375 user IDs (we've been logging bid retractions for the past 8 months)
• eBay has suspended bidding across eBay for 14 days for three user IDs for their second bid retraction
• To date eBay has not taken the step to suspend any IDs but will do so for a bidder who retracts their third bid with PWCC

Please contact me directly (betsy@pwccauctions.com) with any questions, comments, or feedback. Thank you!

All sounds very reasonable to me. Thank you for these efforts!!

If a bidder should have very few justifiable retractions, as you state, then why start at 25? Drastic change! Don't want to punish! They should be punished, they are crooks for goodness sakes.

Couldn't you send out 1 more email, I get multiple emails from you every month, as I guess most of the people that bid or have bid in your auctions.
It wouldn't take much, just a sentence or two. You are welcome to use the following.

If you have 10 bid retractions in the last 6 months you can't bid in our auctions, effective immediately.

Thanks for taking a leadership position on this in the industry. Would be nice if some of the other AHs weighed in with their reaction and efforts in this regard. Let's say I'm not holding my breath.

One already has. Probstein was alerted of shill bidders (by name) and still continued to let them consign AND shill their own auctions.

I agree with Mike. I applaud the effort in general, but there is no reason in my opinion to phase this in so gradually insofar as the bid retractions go. To me it's like giving people three months' notice that robbing banks won't be tolerated.

Glad to see these changes taking place. Would be nice to see Ebay implementing this into their software sitewide, instead of just handholding a single big seller with concerns and forgetting about the rest of their site.

The answer is simple, folks, and doesn't require a lot of hand-wringing: if you really feel that PWCC is giving fraudsters an open ticket for the next several months, boycott PWCC auctions until the company moves to a policy position that makes you comfortable, and email PWCC and let them know you are boycotting them for that reason. If you are OK with as many as ten retractions but not 25, don't do business with PWCC until January 2017. If you think that the number should be 1 or 2 in six months, don't do business with them again until they move to that policy. Either way, let them know and stick to your decision.

It occurs to me that we've had this discussion repeatedly, whether it is over the criminal fraud of Mastro/Legendary, the seedy criminal backgrounds of some dealers and AH owners, the dodgy behavior of certain sellers, eBay shilling (Broadway Rick), market manipulation, etc. If you don't like someone or if you don't like the way they run their business, stop working with them. Our hobby is a business, so hit them where it really hurts: their wallets. If you are going to hold your nose and participate because stuff trumps all, then stop whining about the unfairness of the system in which you are participating. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Please note that I'm not saying boycott PWCC and I am not saying don't. Make your own decision. Just don't take the moral outrage position and then bid in PWCC auctions anyway.

Good Job!
 

Brent and Betsy,

Thanks for your efforts here. While no policy will satisfy everyone this is a great start. I look forward to participating in your future auctions.

Steve

Batter up.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d..._None_ViewLink

We should have a contest to see who can find the most.

Whats Probsteins position...

Bravo
 

Bravo...would welcome the changes.

Z

bidders exclusivity with sellers....
 

In looking at many of the bidders stats it seems a lot of bidders bid a high percentage with PWCC. And I am not saying this in any kind of negative way. Maybe there are collectors who bid almost exclusively with certain sellers? As a prolific ebay bidder, and a person that is all over the map :), it is hard for me to imagine but oh well..

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

.

They can bid all day long with PWCC and only with PWCC for all I care as long as they pay for everything they win with zero retractions!

I hope PWCC quickly moves to a lower number of acceptable retractions. Seeing someone like this as high bidder just does not inspire confidence.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d..._None_ViewLink

I kind of get it. After having had to chase after several refunds in recent months I can understand making a specific effort to bid in auctions run by trustworthy sellers. I "follow" several sellers with my eBay feed because they are honest, trustworthy sellers who present items that interest me and deliver on their auctions. I don't do all of my bidding with them but definitely do a substantial part of it.

Every month they offer thousands of lots with everything from the 19th century to the present in all sports. They combine shipping for the entire length of the auction meaning you don't have to pay until it's completely over. Shipping is cheap, fast, and packed securely. You know when each lot closes and don't have to stay up all night as you do with the major auction houses.

Yes, I do understand that the eBay format makes their system ripe for shilling/fraud, but I do see why busy collectors would be loyal customers and willing to pay more based on the reasons I stated.

I am both a PWCC buyer and consigner. I do not shill but do appreciate the steps they are taking to try and clean up the system.

66% of his/her bids with PWCC too. I am happy PWCC is doing/trying to do something, but that 25 bid retraction ceiling is way too high, imo.