PWCC needs to clean up their act
 

but only after my next consignment sells

-Drmondobueno, after 4 Guinness, a visit to the local priest, and a load of truth serum

Is Betsy the Press Secretary for Brent?

How many bidders have been banned since PWCC went live with their new bid retraction policy?

Wow - Tough crowd here. A quick check shows PWCC with close to 6,000 auctions going on right now. Probably a bit much to police everyone of them. You guys outted this one and Brent responded. No one is forcing you to bid on his auctions.

Based on the number of PWCC bidders vs the number of critics on this thread, the latter is small (but vocal) potatoes.

I don't know you tell me.

I haven't seen them release a number and I see so no reason to. The haters who would care to see a number produced wouldn't believe it anyway so there is nothing to gain for them.

Man, those must be some mad hatters...

Do you think this is causing the hat industry to suffer in the near term?

Why would anyone believe the # if the released it. They come on here and lie about #'s almost every time they post.

I am with you on the they need to just STFU and quit posting their lies over and over. The being quiet works or at least causes way less people to point out your constant lies.

I think it is more long term. I also think it is a benefit because lies like steroids make your head swell up. Once that happens you will need a new hat.:eek::D

This is their highest or second highest dollar auction. And they claimed to have a full time hire weeding out fraud. Straw man argument imo.

No spelling bee champ here. Haha

Nor any literary geniuses!

Edited..Nor

my analogy
 

Hope I don't spell anything wrong!

I'm going to compare this situation to the NFL and Ray Rice and it makes sense in my head so hopefully it makes sense when I type it.

In this example PWCC is the NFL - the all powerful, money generating machine, that can't seem to fail no matter what they do. They know they deliver a superior product and people will continue to pay for it.

So in the Ray Rice case the NFL hands down a 2 game suspension. I personally believe the commissioner (Brent) saw the video prior to handing down the suspension but didn't think it would come out. The NFL only changed the penalty when the video came out TMZ Sports (net54baseball) and Rice hasn't played in a game since. Partly due to the NFL full season suspension and then teams not wanting to deal with the PR nightmare.

But on the flip side how many days was Rice sentenced to serve in jail by the justice system (EBay)? None. So the penalty Rice served was put forth by the NFL (PWCC). Does PWCC have more of a responsibility than EBay? Obviously if they have a hand in hiring bidders or shilling bids then that is a problem. But if there are people doing nefarious (i googled the spelling) things and EBay allows it than what is PWCC's responsibility?

I agree with the OP on this thread and its the issue I have with the NFL (Though I am a Patriots season ticket holder 5x Champs don't hate!). It's not that they let some of these wife beaters, bad guys play in the league, its the holier than thou rhetoric they feed to everyone and think we are a bunch of morons.

At the end of the day the NFL isn't going anywhere, although viewership was down last year. But all these little things do cost them over time. I think it is short sighted by PWCC to allow this person to bid despite the $60K he/she has spent over the past few months. If that person didn't win those items than what do those items go for? Lets say $50K? And what is PWCC's take on $10k less? At the end of the day its a drop in the bucket for them at the same time turning other buyers off from bidding on their items. I for one will be very cautious if not avoid their auctions altogether after reading some of the threads on here. These things add up. And that shortsighted commission from this bidder will probably cost them more money at the end of the day. And at this point they have to know they have a bunch of watchdogs keeping track of their auctions.

OK sorry for the NFL analogy!

Not like there are any savvy people on here, or anywhere else, who are bidding on their auctions. If there was a card of interest, time has proven even with a bad rep, people will still bid, albeit through a snipe.

Anyone else read the title of the thread in Jerry Seinfeld's voice? If you haven't you will now. You're welcome...

PWCC isn't going anywhere. Do you see how big they have blown up over just the past 5 years. Before, I could actually reach Brent on the phone. Now, I would have better luck getting hold of the president. They have started doing things that are trend setting for an Ebay auction seller. When I say a card is high end for the grade, I might get a few dollars more. Not much. If PWCC says a card is high end, it gets double or triple the going rate. They are getting the bids and the commissions to go along with them. There almost seems to be a need for a few other major players in the consignment shop other than Probstein and PWCC.

oh yes...this hobby definitely needs more unscrupulous characters...pls send more!

C'mon now. That's naive. Look at it from a business standpoint. What was their motivation to institute, and more importantly, publicly state their stance against bid retractions? Because they determined that in the long run it would help their business, and profits. Fine.

But why go public with the policy at all? If you run your business with integrity you don't need to shout about it. Just do it. People will figure it out on their own. They went public because they thought it was in the best interest of their bottom line. And at this point, it seems to have backfired.

But remember, PWCC is the one who took to the internet and shouted, "We're the ones you can trust." Well, if you're going to go public about it and use it to market your company, you can't complain when people call you on it, can you?

I didn't mean it like that. You are taking what I am saying out of context.

Competition is always a good thing. Maybe it would help curb some of the "unscrupulousness" that you are seeing.

Success usually brings about competition. In most cases that competition looks to improve the offering to gain market share or eliminate that competition. Blockbuster Video laughed Netflix out of the room when they proposed their DVD by mail model to them for $50M. So Netflix went on to do better than blockbuster and put them out of business.

Major consigners would be crazy not to study the PWCC model and then try to improve it.

Your right. That is why I chose a career path that uses my math skills, economics knowledge and verbal communications skills and it has served me quite well.

First of all just by looking at the shear volume of listings they have I am not so sure it has hurt their business. It might have been five years or so ago when I first came across their auctions as I liked to see what higher end cards were selling for. They averaged in the low 2,000 listings per auction and it was monthly if I recall.

Fast forward to today and that number has sky rocketed. There are segments of the card market that have clearly come down since their attempt at policing auctions and it is probably for two reasons. One they weeded out some bad actors and two the prices on some of the cards had risen so sharply it brought on a lot of supply. They might have actually benefited from the increase in supply. In 2008 and into 2009 people like me actually made more money at the time from people selling out of their investments and then getting into more conservative ones. The market was collapsing but my commission run was rising.

How much did their policy affect their profits? Obviously you or I have no clue but if their listings increased during that time period and they were able to auction off Pop 1's like this, it is very possible their business hasn't declined at all.

I think when Brent started posting a year and a half or so ago it was a good thing. I thought he did a good job at articulating that they were aware of some problems and it seemed sincere to this naive person. That said the crowd hasn't gotten any quieter and in the past six months since Betsy took over it hasn't helped. Like I said I would just go silent and run their business and let the market dictate their success. I also think they need to be careful with what they say as it could be used against them in court and getting into back and forth responses with people on the Internet about sensitive issues doesn't seem wise.

If you look at that situation with the Dimagio card they are dealing with a loose cannon and there is no winning a pissing contest with a person like that behind a computer screen.

If PWCC is so bad then someone out there should come up with a better model and put them out of business. In the mean time from what I can see their lead and market share just keeps growing so they are doing something right.

Which is why they made a HUGE mistake in making a defined number of retraction their policy. They've already broken it because the guy has spent $60,000 in three months with them. There really is nothing to be gained by them posting anything here at all. If anything they should have made the statement that we will try our best to determine when fraud is happening in our auctions and take action...in the meantime we will try our best to lobby ebay to change the rules on bid retractions.

If anything my guess is that ebay will hide all bidding information from buyers before they ever get rid of retractions. They make a whole lot of money from the fraud they pretend doesn't exist.

The excuse of "Probably a bit much to police everyone of them." is a horrible excuse to make for PWCC. That excuse would not fly for any other company, in any other line of business...period.

Imagine someone using an Etrade account as a front for fraudulent manipulation of shares and market prices to gain an advantage, and then Etrade's excuse was "Oh, we're sorry, we're trying REALLY hard to combat fraud on our site but since we have to monitor 175,000 trades daily...you cant expect us to police all of those...do you?"

Not only that, but how freaking hard is it to police say your 100 most expensive auctions (which is where most of the fraud is going to occur) when you (allegedly) have a full time anti-fraud hire in your employ? Virtually every auction that's been outed on this board has been of a high dollar card. It's a stupid trope we see over and over again here from the make excuses crowd. The Brian Moynihan defense.

Great point Mark!
If they are "responsible" for 1 listing then they are responsible for all. If 6,000 listings is too many, then there is a problem. Simple solution- more help to scrutinize each auction or fewer auctions.

I know quite a few collectors who spend really big $$ on cards who won't bid with PWCC at all because of its business practices. They don't post here because they don't care for the trolling experience that all too often results from posting in this forum. Whether their non-participation hurts PWCC's bottom line is impossible to say, but after each round of manipulated pricing from PWCC I hear from more collectors who claim to be bypassing PWCC auctions entirely because of its practices.

As for me, I watch PWCC auctions on items I want but only drop in snipes. Can't recall the last time I won one. I think I got a Probstein win in May.

Yeah , I know I'm late...
 

http://imagehost.vendio.com/a/204295...BUNKER_NEW.JPG

Sorry..usually I try to sneak in a picture of a pre-war baseball player every hundred posts or so but in this particular thread you all are going 'way too fast for an old guy like me ; to make up for my transgression I hereby present the entire complete master set of all Carmen Hill baseball cards. He pitched for the Pirates starting in 1915 at the ripe old age of twenty.

..

Wow, am I ignorant. All this time I thought "shear volume" was the amount of wool cut from a sheep.

Shear
 

Bob--I thought shear involved a deformation of an object in which parallel planes remain parallel but are shifted in a direction parallel to themselves. I guess you could try that with sheep too.

Thankfully I have spell check and grammar check on my side for work related stuff.

I think this is where the moderator comes in and says, anyone can say pretty much what they want to (obviously) but as per the rule at the top of every page, your full name needs to be in your post, signature etc.... or you need to have something that quickly leads to your full name (a website address, blog with name etc...)....thanks all. OH, and if you gave an opinion and don't put your name there, or edit your comments, don't be surprised to see your name there. :)

.

He hasn't been relevant in a very long time in my opinion. It looks like he got the justice that he needed. My guess is, so will PWCC.

Please clarify your post. Not sure exactly what you mean.

He hasn't had any big dollar cards in a long time. Maybe a few, but nothing to the level he had a few years ago. I would say also particularly true in pre war. I don't follow anything other than that.

Gotcha. I saw this card earlier they are selling. In general clearly Probstein lost the market share to PWCC.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-3...wAAOSwfVpYs2JR

Solid chance that is what happened. PWCC doubled and Probstien lost to him.

I believe we will see an awaking with him too, but it may take some time.

I believe the 52 mantle is destined for a SIZABLE down tick. I don't trust anything in the 50s, for lots of reasons. God bless anyone that has the kind of cash to lay on a card that is likely still in hundreds or thousands of peoples attics untouched for 50 years only a few feet from its original owner in that condition.

There are other things keeping that card down, particularly the grading company.

That type of card is not for me at that type of price tag.

[QUOTE=PhillipAbbott79;1668742]I believe the 52 mantle is destined for a SIZABLE down tick. I don't trust anything in the 50s, for lots of reasons. God bless anyone that has the kind of cash to lay on a card that is likely still in hundreds or thousands of peoples attics untouched for 50 years only a few feet from its original owner in that condition.

Exactly!! Just think what the pop reports will be like in 10 years for the Mantle,Koufax,Mays and Clemente rookie cards.

I would agree that the past couple of years have seen some irrational exuberance on that card. Even at the lower grades. You could get a nice 4 for under 15 in 2014 or perhaps even into the next year, yet last year I heard of nice 4s selling in the 60s. That, to me, makes little sense.

I heard centered Mantles will never come down in value.

You know, since I joined the site and got back into collecting in January of last year, I have been hearing this.

I own one, true, but it is in the lower end scale by a long ways so I am not trying to defend to maintain it's value, but could some of what you say not be true for most cards?

I mean, granted, with newer the cards the more likely there will be more of them, but with recent or somewhat current finds of CJ's, and a bunch of others than have been found within the last 2 years, have the prices come down on those any, or even stabilized?

I personally, like you say about the 52 Mantle, think there are a ton of cards still out there from all years waiting to be discovered, even ones preceding the 52 Topps year so will they have a drastic affect on their current values as well?

And, just out of curiosity, do you guys currently own a 52 Topps Mantle?

It's just an observation, but I have read it time and time again on here, whether it be an Aaron RC, a Koufax, or a Clemente, etc, those who say they are way overvalued and are destined to fall, currently don't own one. ;)

All I can say is that no market goes up forever. Speculation in the extreme has hit sports memorabilia again, and sooner or later those driving the market will take their profits and go home. Then the cycle will start all over again.

I currently don't own any postwar cards. My comment doesn't stem from jealousy either. The only big name I would ever care to own would be Mantle cause he grew up playing ball an hour away from where I live. Other than that the nostalgic aspect prewar brings could never surpass postwar for me.

Dale, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the three dudes you quoted could own many multiples of the Mantle you own, so I wouldn't value their opinion any less in the event that they do not own that particular card.

It is actually possible to love postwar and prewar players/cards, just like it's possible to not see dollar signs or population charts when you look at your cards.

Well Done, Sir!
-

That's true. For example I go from Anson to Trout (lol). I would say that at least through the 50s I tend to view them all equally.

I'm with you; I've stumbled onto some cool looking cards of Trout and other modern players lately— there sure is some awesome talent in the game now and some cards with cool retro-vintage designs of those current players. If we love and breathe baseball, it's hard not to embrace all eras and greats, and by extension into cards, all the various cool card sets/designs out there. I never get the vibe that's in some posts where it's as if certain cards or players are pitted in some beef against each other.

Here's Clayton's rookie channeling Derek's rookie. :D

That is a great looking card. Looks like he's about to snap off a filthy curve. Never seen that one before. My son loves Kershaw so now gotta try and find one.

Gotta agree with Matt. I've rediscovered a little more appreciation for 50's material. Some really great affordable cards to be had in mid-grade.

+1. The capital markets have taught us this over and over without fail. If the market is open to all and individuals sense there is the possibility of turning a profit these cycles will occur. As soon as the last fool steps in the downward swing begins. Hope I am not that last fool. PS anyone have any T206 Magee portraits for sale?

The greater fool theory

Prewar, postwar, modern; all just parts of the same spectrum and every year they make more old-school modern cards.

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...%20Kershaw.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...%20Kershaw.jpg

Kershaw is awesome.

No doubt what is old is new. Last year my then 19 yr old daughter wanted a vinyl record player for Christmas.

Back to the other subject, I just wish PWCC would escalate their bid retraction number to get to 2, or less, asap.....

Agreed.

Attachment 275856

Throw in the $60,000 the excused bid retractor has already paid in PWCC Auctions, and assume that the same bidder will prevail in the current Robinson auction which is currently sitting at $37000+,

What is your bet on an over/under at $100,000 for this bidder's winning total with PWCC?

I'm in for over.

Place your bets.

Bidder 2 has 18 retractions

http://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/401...p2047675.l2565

My betting proposition is for the PSA 10 1965 Robinson card.

Your second bidder is bidding on LeBron??/

This one only has 11.
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2471758.m4792

Too tough to monitor a 33K auction though. I understand.

It's the goose-gander defense.

What's good for the 37K bidder is good for the 33K bidder.

Maybe in both of our examples the bidders have met the buying quota to be exempt from being banned for retractions.

That is hilarious and sad beyond belief at the same time.

Footnote 1? Proviso 2?

:D

There must be a hidden set of rules for those that have purchased and consigned with them. If you have done neither, then maybe, just maybe they will limit you to 10 retractions?? That must be what their original letter/memo meant, we just needed to read between the lines.

Quick side note
 

Don't mean to get off topic - but that card is sweeeeet!!

im so happy
 

That the acrimony , discontent and sarcasm have been brought back to this thread . I was worried .

Visit my new website

www.sniperetractor.com

where you can place a snipe bid with 2 seconds left in an auction and then retract it with one second to go.

No max bid is safe and you never need to win a thing.

you could at least set up a rickroll...

Frank you should offer a companion service www.stringbid.com/pwcc that will, at a pre-selected time after the opening of a PWCC auction, place up to ten sequential bids at a pre-designated interval.

Already working on it.;)

Anyone up for a group dialogue by the PWCC booth
 

1 lonely voice.... but if there were a group of people - I bet that would draw some needed attention to those unaware of how shady things are here!

It was awful during the Mastro threads too, when they came on the board and told all of us malcontents how wrong we were. John Rogers did it too, another good hobby guy who just happen to run into a sarcastic few:

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/arti...z-editors-note

Brent and his alter ego Betsy are just the latest in the long list of great hobby guys who were just trying to do the rest of us collectors some good with their auctions until they were derailed by us skeptical no-goodnicks.

yup

11 retraction underbidder on second most expensive card, Star Jordan.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2471758.m4792

25 (lol) retraction high bidder on fourth most expensive card, Fleer Jordan.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2471758.m4792

18 retraction guy from a few days ago still underbidder on LeBron, guess he merited an exemption after all.

Carry on.

The Frank Robinson winning bidder had a QUADRUPLE stack going on.....which means his bid was higher.

The fact e-bay let's this go on is fing insane. Can you imagine what is happening at the AH's that we can't see? Ten-fold this crap.

The only saving grace for me is I put a snipe in at what I think the card is worth; then I walk away. Sometimes I don't even know I won a card until days later. Any other way is just an invitation to be screwed or make an emotional high bid.