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Nobody really wants to know how eBay runs it's business. The issue the board has with certain sellers is that THEY have no control over their own auctions re: shill bidding. Or at least that is the claim we're supposed to believe. But it becomes obvious that if one seller is selling their cards for more than any other seller gets on the same platform using the same search terminology, it is because something is different about how that seller is running their auctions, not because that seller has the right audience. All the sales take place in front of the same audience. |
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Incidentally a purported class action suit was just filed against PWCC in Oregon federal court alleging shill bidding. The Complaint is pretty bare bones.
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Well, I'll take a try at it.
1. What, specifically, is the shill bidding problem that you think PWCC should be responsible for preventing? That they do as little as possible to prevent it. It is a complex problem, as there are at least a few ways to shill. Some more stoppable than others. Bidding up to a max then retracting- Either to ensure a shill bid won't win, or to gain an advantage. They claim they were blocking people with more than a certain number of retractions with Ebays help. (Point one against the idea that they have no access to the data, which in this instance is publicly available anyway) Bidding in increments for the same reason. This is a bit harder, since the mobile app encourages it, just keep hitting the bid button until you're winning. But someone who bids that was but doesn't ever end up with the high bid is at least a bit suspect. The one off bid from a bidder who isn't easily connected to the seller of consignor. Like having a friend put a bid on something as a sort of reserve. (Did it once, because I actually wanted the item and did win, pay and get it. ) I'm not sure something like that could be detected at all, and it's probably not easy if it is. The first two can be figured out from information that's available to the seller. I don't buy some of the tells others have mentioned, like "bought widely different cards" - I have bought T206s and modern junk wax on the same day, along with stamps and bicycle parts... so no, that's not a reliable indicator. 2. What do you think the scale of that problem is? Lets go with the old fashioned "90% of the problems are due to 1% of the people" It may be right or wrong, but it's a place to start. 3. How do you think PWCC can solve this problem? Having at least rudimentary software that looked at the readily available information and at least flagged it for a closer look. From their own announcements Ebay was letting them do that, and helping probably by making a slightly better dataset available. Limiting it by setting a floor value for the item bids looked at would also make it quicker. 4. How much do you think your proposed solution would cost to implement? I suspect it would be either much more or much less than my best guess. A few years ago we were discussing something here that I didn't think would scale, and one of the software guys provided the info in less than a couple hours. I guess it did scale easily after all.... On the other hand, I've asked my wife about setting up a database for me for a card project that's way beyond what I can do myself. The response has been anywhere from "Ummm.... maybe?" to "you'll have to learn that stuff yourself. It would take too much time" 5. How effective do you believe your solution would be with respect to the percentage of reduction in shilled listings? In the short term, probably somewhat effective. Mid term and long term, less effective since as you point out the shills can just start up another account. If it's automated, maybe more effective than I'd believe. Now if Ebay was serious about limiting that problem across all their auctions, they could probably prevent the replacement accounts pretty easily. I'm locked out of one website that won't allow multiple accounts since I use it maybe once every few years and can't recall my username or password and starting a new account ends with "you already have an account attached to that email, log in here" Quote:
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First, there's the issue of buyer's confidence. Having nice clear images that you can zoom in on will always outsell another listing of the same card with blurry pics. Buying from a seller with supernova feedback of 100,000+ ratings will always outsell 'jimbob007' with his (18) feedback score. Obviously there's no shortage of other reputable sellers on eBay, but if you compare a company who does all of those little things right against the overall market, they're going to outsell the competition for those reasons alone. But the biggest factor in how much an item sells for is hands down the number of eyes a seller can get on that auction. And this is where sellers like PWCC and Probstein far outweigh the competition. Just click on the user name of a given seller and you can see how many followers they have. I build predictive models for a living, and I can guarantee you if I were to build a model to predict card prices on eBay, that not only would this factor correlate to auction prices realized, it would probably be the #1 most relevant factor in the model outside of the card itself and the slab it's in. Here's a quick comparison of a few consigment companies: PWCC (312295) - 43,944 followers still today, despite no longer selling on eBay Probstein123 (893960) - 57,861 followers quickconsignment_802 (37054) - 2,682 followers gregmorriscards (312064) - 13,665 followers 4sharpcorners (312086) - 9,321 followers sportscardauctionscom (91092) - 4,046 followers bigboydsportscards (345236) - 12,816 followers pcsportscards (45465) - 6,371 followers Note that PWCC, 4sharpcorners, and gregmorriscards all have ~312,000 feedback (a fun coincidence) yet PWCC has more than 3x the number of followers as GM and 4x that of 4SC! And they certainly had even more than that before being banned from eBay. Marketing matters, and PWCC has learned this far better than their competition. Many other consignment companies have not. People in social media even do live PWCC auction watch parties. I just received a PWCC auction catalog in the mail this weekend. I get notifications from Probstein and PWCC on social media all the time, showing me cards that are up for auction that I never even would have thought to look for. I get email blasts from them as well. And PWCC organized thier listings intelligently. All 1950s baseball ending together around the same time, all 1990s basketball cards together, etc. People would log in and just sort PWCC listings by themselves and see what else was up for sale. This doesn't happen with other random sellers. And most sellers have next to zero followers, or just a few dozen. The only way their cards get seen is if someone specifically searches for that card and finds their listing. Followers matter. Setting up your auctions in an organized manner matters as well. It's all about getting the most eyes on that listing. Say what you want about PWCC, but they were masters of this aspect of selling. Everyone else should be taking notes. |
I'm Not a Twit
Tweet, tweet
I signed up for Twitter, before I realized I would never use it. I have followed no one. I doubt that anyone is following me, nor should they. I don't think I have missed much. |
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Absolutely there is a new generation of collectors/investors/flippers out there. Iphones and tshirts and sneakers and social media and influencers and apps and PSA 10s. And some hobby businesses have definitely done well to adapt to and cater to them.
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Can Ebay be made to share what they know due to a suit like this?
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Wouldn't ebay's statement be at least interesting enough to the court to not dismiss the suit out of hand? At least with a good lawyer presenting the argument?
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If it survives a motion to dismiss I would also make arguments about sequencing of class and merits discovery, and argue for an early class decision since this case IMO is not likely to meet the criteria for class treatment, but that's for down the road. |
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Modern collectors are a different story and maybe there is something to Twitter and marketing when it comes to their tastes. But this is the pre-war board and the issues raised have been centered on pre-war cards. |
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The earliest threads relating to the same tired topic on this board date to 2013. I'd love to see a screenshot of the Twitter numbers then. |
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I can't believe we're arguing about this. More eyes on your listings equate to higher auction prices. Please tell me you agree with this simple fact. |
Your explanation holds water only in a world where the sale prices have grown over time. The same questions have been asked for at least 8 years. All you have to do is search the acronym and hit Last. The number of followers have not created the marketplace. The marketplace created itself out of thin air, which has always been the impression the board has had, even as far back as 2013.
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If you're talking about overall market prices increasing across the hobby over the past 8 years, then that's an entirely different topic. But the answer to that question is surely not that it "created itself out of thin air". New buyers and new money entered the hobby. It's pretty simple. It isn't some artificial price inflation that came from thin air. It was also predictable. |
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And by the way, what are you exactly, a data scientist and/or some kind of programmer, right? So exactly how does that make you an expert on the effects of social media and attracting customers and the business and other aspects of having followers equate to higher sales? Have you ever actually run a business or done marketing or the like? Your statements that PWCC always seems to get higher prices is because they have more followers can't be proven, any more or less than you can actually prove (or disprove) the reason they get higher prices is due to shill bidding. For all anyone knows, it could be (and very possibly is) a mix or combination of factors and not just the one main factor you are pushing, but you certainly don't know yourself more than anyone else. The more you go on and on, the more you start sounding like that other recent poster, Directly, who's main argument over and over again was that he was right and everyone else was always wrong. You're just able to use prettier words than he is. And by the way, your own argument about more eyes equating to higher prices has a big glitch in it. Per your own post, you showed that Probstein actually had significantly more positive feedback and followers than PWCC, yet all everyone seems to talk about (on here at least) is how PWCC always seems to get the highest prices. So please explain this for everyone how Probstein isn't getting higher prices than PWCC then. There are a lot of factors influencing all that is happening and still evolving around us in regards to things like this, and will we ever finally get all the answers, who knows? As I've often said, only time will tell! |
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That is his claim, anyways, as he hasn't actually presented any proof that would substantiate it. Nor has he addressed what they teach you on the first day of Data Analysis 101: correlation is not necessarily causation. Quote:
On a lighter note, I thought I'd share with Snowman how us grayheads used to bid on card auctions outside our hometown back in the day, https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zyiRWA_5c.../telegraph.jpg |
It's interesting that when Snow has a point to make, it's OK to use a very simple correlation -- more eyes equals higher prices. But when someone else has a point, such as that examination of a reasonable sampling of high dollar auctions could be indicative of hanky panky, HIS anaylsis is way too simplistic to prove anything and is meaningless buffoonery absent a full deep data dive. Hmmmm.
Let me guess, Snow will say apples to oranges. Or maybe he'll say that since he alone understands data, he alone can determine how much is needed for any given question. |
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I think I will have to make a fairly lengthy post to better explain why I see this problem of how to identify and prevent shill bidding differently than everyone else in this thread, and why believe it is primarily eBay's responsibility as opposed to PWCC's. However, I don't have the bandwidth right now to explain it in detail, and anything short of that will just resort to more name calling, so I will follow up with a well explained post instead once I have the time. |
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Now based on how he typically responds, I'd expect him to answer back that he doesn't really care if others believe him and his points or not. Or that he's not really trying to change anyone's mind, but will respond in some manner usually that makes people feel he still questions why they don't just automatically acquiesce and accept his point of view on different topics like this one because of his logic and thinking. Which is why I asked the question of him if he knowingly continues on with this contrarian banter because he enjoys irking people, or if truly doesn't have a clue how he comes across. |
He does have a bit of a theory of mind issue but that's not uncommon or a fault, just an observation.
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I shouldn't need to provide data to support that claim. It is obvious. However, I could certainly prove that it's true if I cared to mine the data. Maybe I'll do that for fun in my spare time. It could be an interesting project to understand and measure the impact that it actually has. It would probably only take a few hours to do. The most difficult and time-consuming part would be building the dataset. Doing the math from there is the easy part. Quote:
I'm not an engineer. I'm also not a data analyst or a computer programmer or a developer. There is a bit of overlap with my field to each of those skills, but a data scientist, in general, is someone with multiple degrees in either mathematics, statistics, computer science, or physics. Typically, they will have majored in at least one of those 4 disciplines in undergrad and then will have a graduate degree in at least one or more of these fields as well. There are many sub-specialties within the data science space, but my primary area of expertise is in building predictive models. I basically use complex mathematics to teach a computer to learn how to solve specific problems. When I get the time, I will explain in more detail why this skill set is relevant to the problem of identifying shill bidders, and why I claim it would yield a far superior solution to that problem than hiring a team of data analysts or accountants to do it manually. |
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Here's a free piece of advice. Repeatedly saying that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid or uninformed or unqualified or disingenuous is not an effective means of debate or discussion.
And here's a counterpoint. If a card is common enough and has an established recent value range, it shouldn't matter if an extra 10,000 people or however many view auction 2 instead of auction 1. None of those extra eyes should be willing to pay more than the card is worth/available elsewhere readily. By your theory, almost every PWCC card would sell higher, since it has more eyes on it, and it's just empirically not true. |
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I care more about whether or not I'm making my points clearly than I do about whether or not they are understood clearly. But I do at least attempt to speak with intention and I try not to mince words so that there is no confusion about what I'm trying to say. I do get frustrated, however, when someone takes something I've said and completely twists it around and then puts their own words back into my mouth which I then have to spit back out because they want to manipulate my viewpoint. I will try to be more clear about why I believe something is true in the future rather than just claiming it's true and expecting everyone to believe me. |
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I don't think there's general disagreement that more eyes equal more bids. The disagreement comes in that being a real explanation for what's going on. It has been pointed out that ever since a seller appeared on the scene, as far back as 2013, the same conversation has been had the entire time that seller has been active. Before the followers and before the vault the same issue existed and the same questions were asked. |
Incidentally an interesting point was made on another forum where we were discussing what ebay meant by shill bidding by "persons associated with PWCC." Some think it only means consignors were running up their own cards, not that employees or house accounts of PWCC were involved. But as someone asked, how would ebay know who his consignors were?
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Peter, that phrasing by eBay does leave it open to interpretation. But there's another interesting phrase they used: "If we determine that a buyer or seller is not acting in good faith, eBay takes this seriously and takes action." To me, that would seem to indicate that they believe PWCC is complicit in the shill bidding, as the action they took was to ban them. I would also think that if they felt the consignors were behind the shilling, they would at least attempt to work with a seller that large to resolve the issue. It will be interesting to find out whether eBay ever contacted PWCC to say something like, "Hey, we're noticing some suspicious activity in your auctions involving shill bidding. Let's try to figure this out and stop it." But based on PWCC's response to the ban, it seems as though they were completely surprised by it, which would seem to indicate that eBay feels that PWCC are the ones acting in bad faith.
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I realize this is just speculation, but that does seem to be the currency here, so.... |
Fair enough but I still think ebay was referring to employees or house accounts.
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They likely wouldn't know in all cases, or perhaps even most cases, who the consigners were without some level of cooperation with the consignment companies. However, they can be reasonably certain in many cases. Here's one example of how they could predict who might be shill bidding on their own items. Let's say eBay user 'goneFishing64 (18)' had 7 PSA graded cards for sale as 'buy-it-now' listings with his PSA certification numbers entered in the listings but wasn't getting any bites. He decides he really needs the money but knows that if he auctions them off himself, he wouldn't do as well since he only has a feedback score of (18), so he ends the listings and sends the cards off for consignment. Two weeks later, those same certification numbers get entered by the consignment company and one week after that, his eBay ID places a bid on all 7 listings, or a different eBay ID that shares an IP address with 'goneFishing64' places bids on those 7 listings. eBay would have all of this data at their fingertips and it would be easy to write a query to flag all similar cases. It would also probably find a lot of people doing this (albeit a small percentage of the total pool of shill bidders). But that's at least one way that eBay could be reasonably certain that a consignor has placed shill bids on their consignments with a company like PWCC. |
The hypothetical makes sense, thank you, although I still don't think that's what they are referring to.
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For legal, business, and practical reasons, I don't think that eBay would ban PWCC without having sufficient evidence that they were involved in the shill bidding and/or they knew or it was brought to their attention that consignors were engaged in shill bidding and they did nothing about it.
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Oh, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to think that eBay knew exactly what was going on and rode the wave while the bucks were pouring in, then took action when it looked as though the money train was about to go off the tracks. But still, I have to think that they have evidence of wrongdoing by PWCC, as banning them solely out of vindictiveness would have costly consequences.
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Neither outcome would be all that surprising to me (the 'individuals associated with PWCC' being actual employees or just consignors). Although if it ever does get shown that PWCC employees themselves placed these shill bids, my money would be on that being something like Brent shilling his own cards or someone on the inside shilling a close friend's cards or something like that. I just can't imagine a scenario where PWCC was involved in widespread shilling of auctions in general. From a game theory perspective, it would be remarkably stupid (with a 'risk of ruin' very near 100%). It would be acting against their own best interests. Although, stranger things have happened, and people do dumb shit every day, so who knows. |
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But it's more about getting the right eyes on stuff. A friend collects 16mm films, and is I think pretty well known in that hobby. I tried helping him sell some of the cheaper stuff.. Had a print of a pretty decent school film of a famous story. It was everything you could ask for, low fade emulsion on Mylar, and looked like it had hardly ever been used. Maybe even a couple B or C list actors too. Not super valuable, but very nice. I listed it twice at 24.99, no bidders. Told him I couldn't see letting it go for less. He listed it higher, using my description and pictures. Sold in under a day at fill price, Maybe 40? On the other hand, I would list stuff that was practically junk, with an accurate description of its faults, and for me that stuff sold. |
When I used eBay way back when, I'd have my bookmarked sellers. I collected unusual and rare items (photos, autographs, memorabilia), and I bookmarked them because I knew they were experts (authenticity), would have interesting stuff and were reliable. Others used them similarly and I'm sure the sellers got healthy prices.
However, that's different than selling a readily available 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas for 2x the price. |
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Most people who find their way to 'major' ebay sellers do so by happenstance. They spend ever increasing time on ebay looking at one item which leads to another, and as they build their buy knowledge and indeed add items to their collection, they are exposed more and more to better material and scarcer more desirable and price rich pieces. The very act of going through this 'learning' process on ebay sets very quickly eBay's greatest strength for any prospective buyer: the ability to find items you want first, but even more importantly with so many contributing sellers you will find quite a number of the same item, and can compare condition and price etc before choosing your buy. It's this very nature of comparative shopping that makes it hard to believe one eBay Seller could so massively get higher prices than the thousands of competing sellers. Its audience has already learned how to search on eBay, how that often takes time to find the thing you want, how you can assign a price in your mind you're willing to pay and where that will meet up with how often the item shows and how much you need it...it's all part of the game on eBay. That card collectors, who know there are other copies at same grade showing up regularly on eBay through different sellers, at prices sometimes 30-40% less, would just blythely say sure, "I'm happy to pay overs, even though I know I might someday want/or have to sell it again, and may not get my money back or make less on it that I otherwise can".....to be what? Brand or seller loyal? Where there's no incentive to be? I just don't believe it. More eyes giving greater opportunity to MAXIMIZE prices sure, but this collector space is sooooooo filled with assured professional sellers dispensing so much of this stuff, you'd have to be a nuffy to only buy at a mark up. Nuffies here and there affecting some prices, sure, I could believe it. But it's the very steady nature of PWCC and Probstein prices achieved over others that doesn't gel with the nature of the card market. |
If you guys were to guess what percentage above-average selling prices that PWCC and Probstein get for their auctions, what would you guess?
For example, say a card usually sells for $500 on average, does it sell for a 20% premium at PWCC at $600, or a 5% premium at $525, or does it sell for 100% premium and go for double at $1000? What do you think the "PWCC and/or Probstein effect is"? <5% 5-10% 10-25% 25-50% >50% |
All PWCC/Probstein cards are not the same. There are at least two distinct groups, those consigned by collectors and smaller dealers, and those consigned by card doctors/larger dealers. I would bet the stats are very different for those two groups.
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Eyeballs and "safe" packaging account for the higher prices. I can count dozens of times when I've seen an inexperienced seller list a great card, and it sells for fair market. My guess is the attempt at asking for a "value above the norm" would be countered with " but all the buyers are avoid +/- 10% sales tax due to the vault. So there's that excuse on the table |
I think you look at trends rather than specific sales.
It seemed obvious that there was broad shilling going on at MastroNet because of the unusual pricing (a result of bidding) throughout the auction. The bidding/pricing patterns throughout the auction were unlike other auctions. |
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