And on perfect cue...in yesterdays mail an advertisement from PWCC promoting their premier auction. Coincidence? I don't think so?

Well, if you're not going to post your name, then I will - how does that sound? His name, ladies and gentlemen, is ... JACK FROST. Here is his recent picture:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...3NTg@._V1_.jpg

Huh. I was thinking his name was Parson Brown. ;)

Based on his history, I thought his name was was Bo Hunter... not to be confused with Bo Jackson or Hunter Pence.

I suppose that only those who frequent BO (meaning Blowout- not just another Bo) will get the reference.

the one and only Snowman
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...b80849a0_z.jpg

Yes that was his Blowout ID. Not his real name though.

It is very simple for me. I set the highest price that I am comfortable in paying and submit it. If it goes above that price. I move on to the next auction of a like item. No science or woo involved in the decision making on my end. Just the bottom (or top) line for me.

The question is how you arrive at that highest bid value. If you use prices previously paid on the same or similar cards in order to decide how much you are comfortable paying, then you are exposed to the shilling problem. If you use no historical sales data in deciding your highest price, but others bidding against you are using that historical pricing to make their bids, and you lose the item as a result, then you are still exposed to the problem.

Back to PWCC ...

Here is the way I see it: eBay is the largest marketplace for sports cards, right? And majority of the insane prices would come from PWCC - shilling or no shilling. And of course, this set off a chain reaction of increased prices. Now, with PWCC being gone, I want to see what will happen to card prices on eBay over the next couple of years.

Good Point and Very interesting.

Will be interesting to see

And prices on a larger scale. After all, how many people exclusively use eBay "comps" for pricing?

(yes, I realize there are other pricing tools available)

If you're willing to pay $100 and your bid is artificially (and illegally!) bumped from $30 to $40, you lost and were cheated out of money.

If you're okay with being overcharged 33% on every purchase because all you focus on is some abstract top number (Which, as has been already been pointed out, is probably also artificially inflated), you're not financially smart and I'd prefer you not manage my money.

As Benjamin Franklin said, "A penny saved is a penny earned."

This sounds like the equivalent of walking into the car dealership and having the guy ask you "well, how much can you spend a month . . . "

It is not that complicated, I set a price based simply on what I want to pay for the item. I am not exposed to anything. I set my price and if the bidding goes up to my price and I get the card at the high end, so be it and I get the card. I am not exposed to anything but the amount I am willing to pay. Nothing more, nothing less.

I beg to differ. Buying a car and buying a card are not the same in any shape or form. Buying a car is negotiating the best price for me.

Setting a high bid for a card is how much I want to pay for the card.

This is not rocket science in any shape or form. I set my buy price, if I get the item I am bidding on for that price, good for me. If it goes for less, good for me. If it goes for more, good for the person who bought it.

It is exactly that simple for me. YMMV

What makes no sense? I didn't trust the initial email (in other words I was worried it was a scam and didn't want to follow the link). Hence, I went right to eBay's site to have them call me back (the safe way to do it). I was called back in just over a half hour. The Rep had not heard about the email and told me that in all her years there eBay had not "outed a seller or buyer like that." She then told me it was (in her view) a fake email. Of course now we know it was real. My guess is that eBay did not inform all their reps.

I have zero ax to grind. I am not blaming the rep but will blame the job eBay did in getting the info out internally.

That’s called being an “enabler”. Shillers prey on people like you because you are happy paying your highest price when, without shilling, you would get many items for much less.

I am enabler....that is rich.

Scenario for you. Once card sells for x amount and has a buy it now price on it.

Another card starts out at y price then ends up at x price. (Both the same price).

What do you call that? No one enabled anyone with either sale of the card.

And in this scenario we are talking about the same card type just different methods of how it is sold.

Butch Turner

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Yep, the one example that makes no difference and supports your case. How about this.

Your highest price is $1,000. Someone is willing to pay $500 so you should win it at $510. But shiller boosts it to $999. You win for $1,000.

Now repeat 10 times per year with the $500 being some other number either higher or lower, doesn’t matter. My preference is to win all 10 auctions at a total cost well below $10,000. I might even be able to buy more than 10 items that year.

You are being an enabler and are being preyed upon. The rest of us put in max bids hoping and expecting they will go for less.

So for those PWCC customers who want to take their items out of the PWCC vault, will that create a taxable event?

You like paying the absolute highest price you're comfortable with every time?

If you're willing to pay $100 for a card and someone lists it for $80, do you throw in an extra $20?

What I am waiting for is for PSA to remove all PWCC results from its database of auction prices. Their crap is just so fraudulent. I was tracking the PSA 9 Mayweather RC and found that PWCC 'sold' the same exact card (by cert #) every two months like clockwork, and for vastly different prices. Do they really expect me to believe that a guy who bought the card for over $11K decided to sell it for under $6K in sixty days? Yeah and I have a bridge for sale too, really nice, goes from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Boom exactly I mentioned the same for VCP to hopefully remove Pwcc from their databases.

Unless you live in Oregon, I would sure think it does!

251. Standing Shill
The BS involved with ignoring the fact that illegitimate bidders screw everyone over and drive prices fraudulently upward. It’s usually accompanied by an inane statement such as, “I bid the maximum I’m going to bid and that’s it. Whatever happens, happens.”

So let's assume PWCC prices have been widely inflated AND they have had a gravitational effect on other prices. The whole market is inflated. What's the appropriate response assuming you still want to try to win certain cards?

Amazes me how many people have that attitude. As long as they put in their max bid, they are unaffected by the fraud. Lets hope that all these enablers and PWCC supporters wind up with a collection full of Moser cards. They deserve it.

Possible answer:

hahahaha this is too funny by a whole lot. Me and my shillness and enabling will continue to stuff the coffers pockets full of money.

I don't see it that way, won't see it that way.

I collect cards by this axiom:

See a card, like a card, buy a card. Don't really matter what anyone else thinks about it either.

Cheers,

Butch Turner

Try not to be factious. Of course not. I would hope there was a make offer price and see what happened. But if the $80 price is what I am willing to pay what does it matter to anyone else? If it is a card I need or want. Sold American.

Seriously, this is not that hard to understand.

Butch Turner

Pretty much blew you own argument out of the water with your very last sentence.

"The rest of us put in max bids hoping and expecting they will go for less."

Me too!! ain't that funny. I set it and don't care, you set it and care. Laughable.

Nice talk,

Butch Turner.

I am totally against shilling and seeing someone get run up in price. But the other complaint by many people not directly involved in such a shilled transaction is that it then possibly sets a higher false price for the card that was shilled so that when they later go to acquire that same card, they may end up having to pay more for it than they may have wanted. But if someone did put up say a $100 max bid on a card that would normally only sell for $30-$40, and it got shilled up to say $80, is that really a false and inflated market price?

If the person who ended up winning it at $80 was actually willing to go $100 for it, then isn't $100 the true market price and they actually got the card they wanted at less? I always thought the definition of market value/price was what someone was willing to pay for something in an open, arms length transaction. But in reality, isn't what normally ends up getting recorded as the highest price someone is willing to pay actually based on the second highest amount someone is willing to pay, and not necessarily the true highest amount?

I understand the concept of market manipulation through shill bidding, but for that to be what is actually occuring, don't the people behind the market manipulation scheme actually have to end up winning (and paying for) the overly priced cards they are trying to manipulate? If they ended up just increasing what a legitimate buyer was actually willing to pay for the card, haven't they really just succeeded in exposing a more true, top market value for the card?

Market price at auction needs two people to determine it accurately, and they need to be working in good faith. If one person is willing to pay $100 and the next highest is willing to pay $50, the market price is one bid past $50, not $100.

Market price determined by a winning bid among competitive bidders(legit) is one thing, what a person is willing to pay may in fact be far more and not indicative of the overall market.

If I understand your point, I think the answer is no. People pay based on what other people are bidding and what a card has sold for. Take a single auction. I own ten other examples of the card being offered, which has sold before for 100 max. I hope to push up the price so as to unload some of mine, so I bid 125, hoping a "legitimate" buyer thinks it's a real bid and that the card is going up, and tops me at 130. Odds are I will hook at least one such buyer. I do this gradually over time with 5 more examples and eventually the price of the card gets to 200. I would call that a manipulated price, not a new true one. And I haven't won any.

Same thing happens with Probstein123, 13k one month, next month same cert number sells for 7k. Lost half its value in a month. Funny how that happens.

So true. The manipulation is real

An asset is "worth" what someone will pay. If a store owner, or a guy at a show, or a buy it now on ebay is asking $130 and someone is willing to pay it, there's your comp. If you bid on a card so as to push it into range where someone will have to pay $130, and someone does, then that is a comp. The thoughts going through the minds of the store owner, the table holder at the show, the ebay seller, or the 2nd highest bidder don't matter.

I sit and think back it’s really sad all the manipulation that has occurred. The even more depressing thing is people are still worshiping at the PWCC alter.


A fool and their money are soon parted.

Totally agree with the manipulation. While happy with the cards I have purchased over the years from PWCC, I will never bid on one of their auctions again.

So you don't recognize market manipulation? OK, we can disagree. Shill bidding shouldn't bother you then, as long as someone really paid at the end of the day.

"Market price" has changed drastically over the past 18 months or so...with all the new "collector/investors" looking to "acquire assets" that they can "flip quickly" based on "current comps."

Things were a bit simpler when people just collected cards.

Has anyone ever thought that EBAY also stands to benefit by taking back market share as well as getting full % margins from sales that PWCC had already negotiated a fixed rate commission on.

More sellers cards migrate back onto the EBAY platform while tainting PWCC's reputation all in one neat email?

Either way, both platforms have effectively driven up transactional costs for the collector

On a related note, for those despairing due to the length of the investigation, I don't think the FBI has given up on the hobby:

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...gery-sentence/

Please, Peter, don't put words in my mouth. I do not think shill bidding is okay.

If a card has been selling in the $120 range and someone lists it in their store/convention table/ebay/net 54 marketplace for $130, are they also "manipulating the market" by trying to push the price up? In a rising market, many dealers do raise their prices. Is it against the Peter Principle for them to try to get more for their cards by raising their ask prices?

Bottom line, if people are paying $130 for a card, that is what it is "worth."

That's circular reasoning, no? True in every single case, and therefore by definition excludes the notion of a manipulated price.
And your example is very different from mine and you know it, in mine people are putting in bids hoping they don't win, for the purpose of driving up the price. Classic market manipulation in my opinion. Making bidders think someone else really wants the card at a higher price. Whether it's OK or not is a different question of course, my only point is under those circumstances I would question whether the final price is manipulated or not as opposed to reflecting some concept of a market price.

As you said, your definition is market price at "auction". I always heard the FMV of something was what a willing buyer would agree to pay an unrelated willing seller for something in an open, arms length transaction. So if the party looking to buy a particular card is willing to pay $100 for it, but because they are seeking to buy it through an auction and end up getting it for less than their max bid, it doesn't mean they couldn't have run across that same card with a dealer at some show and gladly paid the $100 he was asking for it, right? So if that is the case then what is the correct market value of that card, at least at that point in time? It sure isn't just one increment over $50.

Plus, when dealing with an auction you are limited by who decides to participate. There is no guarantee that all potentially interested parties are participating or even aware of a particular auction, or a specific card in it. Of course the same goes for card shows and individual dealers selling a card outright, they don't have all potential buyers necessarilly aware of and looking to buy a card they have for sale either. And the thing about an auction is that you normally don't know the maximum amount someone who ends up winning an item for is actually willing to pay for it, which to me would be it's true market value. We really only know what the second highest bidder attending/participating in that particular auction was willing to pay.

You may be biased in that you operate an auction house and possibly tell potential consignors that an auction is the best way for them to get the highest possible market value for their items they look to sell, but is it always? I've heard of people saying items they put up for auction didn't go for what they thought they would and were sometimes disappointed in what an item ended up selling for, and I would suspect that has happened in your auctions as well. At best, auction and Ebay results are good indicators of where the "market" is approximately on cards, but to truly know what someone is really willing to pay for an item you need to know the max amount they would have gone for that item. That would be a more true "market"value. But still, think about how many times here just on Net54 you've seen someone post how after the fact they heard about something they didn't know was being auctioned, or how they were in an auction, but because there were so many items they were going after they couldn't afford to go more on some items they wished they could have. Those kind of things affect final hammer prices negatively, but is that hammer price on such items truly an indicator of accurate "market" prices then?

I've always felt that most people acquiring items through auctions are doing so because they expect to get things for less than what they perceive market value to be. Why else would you always hear of so many people talking about being run up in their max bids? They are ticked because they fully expected to pay less, and they have every right to be if somehow their max bid amount became known and was used solely to run up what they paid. Granted, there are marquee and uber rare items, like the recent PSA3 Wagner sale, where no one has any idea where the market truly is. So they consign it to auction to hopefully get the top price, and it sells for a record $6.6M. But what if instead of an auction the consignor instead put it up for sale at say $7.5M, and the same person who won it for $6.6M happily pays the $7.5M for it because he/she thinks it is really worth $10M. So in that case your "auction" value is way below what a more true FMV should be.

And maybe a more measurable indicator that auctions aren't always perceived as the best way to get maximum market value for a card is Ebay itself. When Ebay started out it was primarily an auction platform, but if you looked at pre-war vintage card sales over most recent years, the number of actual auctions is usually around 1,000-2,000 at any point in time. Meanwhile the total number of pre-war vintage cards being listed was more like 40,000-50,000. At least it used to be before Ebay changed the search filters and you could look up pre-war baseball as a specific category. Point is, the vast majority of sellers did not feel auctions would get them the max market value. And yes I know there are certain dealers well known for their pages and pages of supposedly overpriced BIN listings, but that doesn't change the fact that if they felt they would get a comparable/higher max price by putting their items up for true auctions instead that that is what they would be doing.

There is no perfect indicator of a card's FMV, and it most definitely fluctuates over time, especially during this current pandemic period we're going through. But at least to me, it isn't as simple or accurate to say a card's FMV is what it just sold for in the most recent auction.

If a card is at auction and a shill bidder bids $120, the message he's sending is that the card is worth $120 to him. He is hoping someone will think it is worth $130, but he is not telling people that.

However, if a dealer lists a card at $130, he is saying that is the price it will take to acquire it from him, implying that is its value.

Shill bidding is not an acceptable tactic. But a shill bidder is hoping to get someone to pay $130 for that card. A dealer revising his ebay listing, jacking their ask price up to $130 is trying to get someone to pay $130 for the card. Either way, if someone is looking at that card and willingly decides he will pay $130 for it, then there you have it.

Examining the motivation of an under bidder in an auction doesn't change the reality that the card voluntarily transacted at $130.

+1