PWCC Part Deux
 

I am disappointed that the previous PWCC thread was locked. I am not a defender of Courtney. I think he is part of the problem in our collecting world as he cares more about how much money he makes vs "most" of us who are purely collectors.

However, he has shown us some pretty damning evidence where PWCC (Brent and company) is participating in the same BS which a lot of us has believed that is occurring. I, along with a lot of people were waiting for Brent to refute the evidence. The only response was to come back at Courtney that he was "un-stable."

Sorry, if I were Brent and I was innocent, I would vehomently deny his accusations. Because he didn't, my gut tells me what most of us believe that he is part of the problem.

I believe Brent should respond back and communicate to us that he did not ask Courtney to shill bid the auction. Not lawyer is needed. If he didn't, then he should respond. No response speaks volumes in my opinion.

Again, I am not defending Courtney. Sammy the Bull wasn't a good person either but he did spill the beans on John Gotti.

Mark

In fairness I believe they did offer an explanation, although one that certainly did not impress everyone. They said they asked him to become the high bidder because he had placed a string of earlier bids without becoming the high bidder and they thought it would look better if he became the high bidder.

LMAO.......EXACTLY why my gut tells me something isn't right with this entire situation.

Yeah, but the guarantee that his bid won't hold as high bid says all I need to know about the real reason for asking him to shill, and it isn't making it look good.

And I too am disappointed the other thread was shut down. It was entertaining (mostly) and involves an issue of significant concern to collectors. Should've been allowed to run its course.

I think he could have meant the bid wouldn't hold anyway because it would still be way too low, but maybe I am misreading it?
If Courtney has more he can post what he wants to. I think we need to be cognizant to how a text can be physically manipulated too. I am not saying any that were shown were. Just that there is always at least a possibility of it. The other thread was shut down because we weren't even talking about the original subject any longer. I quoted a 3 day old quote as the last post, which questioned it's longevity too. I can assure everyone that no one is being protected. In fact, if I had to guess, there is probably more being done than meets the eye.

Once the name calling started, the little tidbit that Brent had asked him to bid, fell by the wayside.

Any person running an auction contacting a bidder other than to let them know that the auction is over and they have won the item is showing an immense conflict of interest.

The #'s PWCC gets for some of it's items makes no sense what-so-ever.

I guess you can rationalize just about anything. My rationalization is maybe he meant that he is a greedy, unethical fraudster and he wanted to shill the auction to higher level. No matter what you believe, the fact that an auctioneer is telling a bidder how to bid and how much to bid is certainly unethical and borderline against the law. And I don't think I'm misreading anything.

Speaking of which this one blew my mind -- 8s go in the 4s and 5s.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1965-Topps-R...cAAOSw5cNYlPWJ

I will repeat what I have said for years. PWCC's auctions don't look like anyone else's, in my opinion. Among the things I have noticed, over and over again:

1. On big cards, a very high percentage of early bidding activity, right out of the gate. Within a day or two many of the big ticket cards seem to be pretty close to the top already. I rarely see that with other auctions.

2. On big cards, lots and lots of string bidding, often by the same bidders.

3. A high percentage of bidders who seem to do a high percentage of their bidding in PWCC.

4. Improving of late, but lots of bidders with high numbers of retractions.

and

5. Crazy prices, although obviously not on most cards.

Good points!

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1965-Topps-1...615?rmvSB=true

I must not understand this whole thing.

If this guy admits asking someone to bid on his own cosigned cards, doesn't that bring into question the integrity of the whole operation? Whatever the reason he did it, isn't that a key thing in auctions? Not to bid up your own cards?

Based on eye-appeal, I much prefer the PSA 7 from PWCC, over the PSA 8 in your link. The 8 is OC and it has that spot in the lower right corner. The PSA 7 appears to only have slightly softer corners, but the centering and eye-appeal are outstanding.

Steve

The WWG DiMaggio was not consigned by Cortney to Brent's auction. However, as I pointed out in the locked thread, Brent should not be having discussions with any bidders about what to bid let alone assuring Cortney repeatedly he will be out bid when the card was well over 40K.

Irv's was a bad example there are plenty of nicely centered 8s that have sold for far less than that 7. Not to mention nicely centered 7s that have sold for one third of that one.

He did not ask someone to bid on their own card. The card belonged to another member here.
James

Thank you.

So it's OK to ask someone to bid on someone else's card?

Where the hell did you see me say that?
James

It was the only 8 example I could find quickly, but I thought it still got the point across?

Either that 7 should be an 8 or higher or the 8 I posted be a 7 or lower.

Ironic, another questionable PSA card in a PWCC auction. :D

I was asking, because you seemed to be making the distinction.

I don't really care who owned the card, who was the bidder or who put the card up for auction. If a person who is consigning an auction asks a 3rd party to bid up the auction, that is unethical and a serious problem for the hobby.

I was correcting what BruinsFan said about PWCC asking someone to bid on their own card. How you came up with this meaning that I thought it was ok for someone to bid on their own card is beyond me.
James

Now I am confused, because my question concerned bidding at the request of the auction house on someone ELSE's card not one's own.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, James. My only point is that NO ONE who profits off an auction should be speaking to any 3rd party to bid up that auction.

No, you were confused when you responded to my first comment. I mis-read the part about someone else's card but I still don't see how you thought I was condoning any auction house asking anyone to bid on any card they have listed. Let's see if this confuses you, I'M DONE WITH THIS CONVERSATION.
James

This is a great point that is often not discussed. I've also noticed this with PWCC as compared to other ebay auctions.

Why would collectors bid one way on PWCC items and another way on everything else?

Inquiring minds want to know ...

jeff

I think everyone knows the answer although no one wishes to say.

I'm not going to defend PWCC because I think the real scandal is that Brent purchased the DiMaggio and had it cleaned, but I think it's clear that Cortney was one of his problem bidders that Net54 had been talking about for years, I'm sure at one point Brent and Cortney were probably very close allies, but because of places like Net54 pointing out the shady bidding practices that people like Cortney employ Brent was forced to police some of that stuff.

String bidding is done to find the top bid and to also make it appear one has been shilled. It is quite clear that Cortney who was likely warned about doing that type of bidding had once again done it on the DiMaggio card. The text message was clearly telling him that he was out of bounds and that he needs to top the bid if he's going to bid like that. Make no mistake, string bidding is a strategy to make the top bidder believe he's been shilled and try and scare him off of the auction. Looks to me like Brent was trying to avoid the appearance of shilling in one of his auctions.

Interesting theory. Although highly plausible, would lead me to believe, why would Brent do something like this?? He is making money hand over fist!! It begs the question, "How much is enough"? Not denying or supporting your theory. It definitely makes you think though.

That is my thinking, too, and of course, like the ancient saying goes, "Friends and Business don't mix" so it was only a matter of time before something like this we have before us, was going to happen.

Yeah but...Asking a bidder to bid and reassuring him he won't be the top bidder for long is asking him to run up the price in a way that conceals the shilling. No matter how you slice it this is still baloney. And if that bid had held would he have had to pay for the card or would it be a case of a renege and resale? We won't be able to see that but I have a pretty good idea of what would happen.

I don't necessarily disagree. At very best it has the perception of impropriety. The whole "games that were being played" is a really bad thing.

My thoughts exactly.

I think it would be wrong if the auction house asked you to bid on ANY cards, not just your own

lol.

You do not ask someone to change their bidding habits and ask them to bid higher on a card because it will be overtaken by the next bid. You explain to them that you will block them if they continue what they are doing.

They warn for bid retractions. Why wouldn't they warn him? To me the request from Brent is not open to interpretation based on how they handle other warnings and other bidders. Warn and Block. This is not warn and block. Period.

Exactly Phillip, my memory may not be exact here and I'm not going to search the previous thread again, but as I recall Betsy indicated they had bidding issues with Courtney in the past had discussed them with him and he reverted back to his old ways on this auction. So why not ban him and restart the auction? He had already been warned and if we can believe the text messages they clearly knew he did not want to win the auction. Had they done that they would have shown a real commitment to cleaning up the bidding in their auctions, they also might get more bidders into the next auction that were staying away due to the "strange" bidding in the current auction. Win -win for PWCC - but nope, makes more sense to start texting a bidder in your auctions whom you know has been a problem in the past.

Courtney appears to be no saint, but PWCC appears to have known the card was doctored and said nothing and appears to have been shown to contact bidders and tell them to bid while assuring them they wont win the auction while the auction is live.

I went back and read the whole original thread. To a relative newcomer, it was very educational and very scary. Mostly, it made me glad I'm not involved in big-ticket cards.

Dan, I'll take it one step further, that Brent purchased the DiMaggio and had it cleaned AND DID NOT DISCLOSE THIS!

I have a problem with this.....

Not sure if this helps piece anything together but supposedly the person who consigned the WWG DiMaggio to Goldin purchased it at the 2015 National, which would have been after it sold in the REA as an SGC 4.

Yes you need to read the other thread this already was chronicled at length. :)

Right, I'm thinking everything surrounding the purchase, cleaning and somehow getting it into a PSA 7 holder...all of that stinks to high heaven.

One point not being made is at least PWCC's auction allow for some things to be seen behind the curtain. Do you know anything that goes on with mile high, REA, heritage and the like? You receive ZERO information about the bidders basically. Yes there is no bid retractions it appears. But who knows what goes on with texts. When tens to hundreds of thousands are on the line i cant assume everything is fair to everyone. Just like i dont assume cracker jack cards with no stains on them werent cleaned.

Just saying that people are picking on pwcc but at least you get a little transperacy in their auctions and some information on bidding behavior and you dont have to bid. You have ZERO idea whats going in the other auction houses. I have bid on auctions on ebay by the way and the seller doesnt have the card or halfway through the auction the listing is pulled or the card gets lost in the mail. None of those things ever happened on an pwcc auction in listings i have won.

Talk about damning someone with faint praise. :rolleyes:

I understand what you're saying about auctions in general but I specifically said eBay auctions. I have the same transparency with other eBay auctions as I do with PWCC. Bidding patterns are typically much different with PWCC. Many, many more bids early in the process. Many, many more bids by those that have a significant number of retractions. Many, many more bids by accounts that only bid (or mostly bid) on PWCC items. Why does this happen?

jeff

I hear all the time that the auction houses dont know the max bids, it is a type of software. If I ever received an outbid notice, and then went to check the auction and I was th high bidder again, I'd be suspicious.

One time I hit straight bid by accident and called the auction house to have it changed to max bid. They were willing to back up my bid to make me the high bidder and place my max bid.

100% agree. PWCC said they blocked his user names which means they knew he had multiple user names, and then said they blocked him period - all ID's as well as him as a person. I would like to know how they had all of this info on him and is it typical for eBay sellers to know that much about their customers. Seemed to me they were aware of a lot more info than a typical seller/buyer relationship which makes everyone wonder how much they were in cahoots.

A few things were abundantly clear:

PWCC asked him to shill bid on their auctions and the text asking him to bid up the DiMaggio and he won't be the high bidder is self explanatory.

Most people were aware of Courtney a long time ago and his multiple user names and which cards he was shilling. As many could see by his posts not the smartest guy out there, and probably should use some of his money he saved with his 60+ Retractions to get some anger management lessons.

His little spat on here with anyone and everyone pretty much assures that his days in the hobby are limited. Not hard to drive up prices when you are working with a large online seller and stating "you were bidding to protect prices" is garbage. If you were protecting prices why have more retractions than half of the population of Alabama in a 6 month time period? Not hard to bid and retract to drive prices when the seller is not stopping you.

The hobby will survive, there are a lot of good buyers and sellers out there which make the hobby fun, and people like to pull shenanigans like this will lose business and maybe get to talk to some Feds about fraud and doing it across state lines.:D

I concur 100%! I'm sure we're just grazing the tip of the ice-berg. Hopefully big brother is "watching". :)

I've been saying this here and on other boards for a long time. Anyone with some rudimentary SQL skills and experience in database development can find out what the maximum bid is from anyone on any item. Even if there is data level security, some DBA somewhere has admin privileges to find the number.

If you believe auction houses either develop or purchase auction software, and purposely ignore efforts to determine the values in a "MaxBid" type field, you're nuts. But hang tight, as the tooth fairy, Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus will all be coming to your place tonight.

I have read some of the threads above but not all of them and don't think it matters much. What I do think matters is that once a card has been graded it has effectively been commoditized. Commoditized in the sense that it might not be widely available but it should be indistinguishable from another graded similarly from the same grading company and therefore is identifiable and SUBSTITUTABLE. SUBSTITUTABLE is the key thing here. It is basic free market tenant that a psa 4 of a certain player is a psa 4 of that player regardless of who the seller is, the laws of economics make those 2 cards equal value.

There is only one way those 2 cards can be worth different amounts and that is if other services have been attached to those cards or they have been exposed to a greater audience of potential buyers. Given that, I feel I don't ever need to read these stories, similar cards should be selling for approximately the same price regardless of who the seller is. If they don't, something has to be occurring during specific auctions for that psa 4 that is not occurring in other auction all else being equal. If that weren't the case, arbitrage would be possible and would occur, that's how things work, period. I'm not talking about any specific seller here I am talking about the process and market dynamics.

In my opinion, something is occurring in certain auctions to garner higher prices for the exact card than in other auctions for that same card.

Can it be anything else?????

Sure, some people exclude buy it now listings from their searches. Other that that, nothing

Your premise that all cards in the same grade from the same TPG are worth the same is flawed.

I agree.

Many cards, despite the same grade have different flaws and each of those flaws affects the cards value.

Some don't mind a bit of off center, or dinged corners and some don't mind small wrinkles/creases, but there are always those, including myself, depending on the flaw, can't stand certain things; creases for me.

Also, it depends who is looking at the time, how bad they need a card, etc, etc, etc.

Too many variables to say all 4's, for example, should be priced the same.

All PSA 4's (or any grade), are not equal. One only has to look at PSA's grading standards to realize this.

First off, does the card have 50/50 centering, or is it centered 85/15?

Is there a crease in the card, or not?

Is the surface scuffed/scratched, or not?

How bad is any rounding of the corners?

How much of the original gloss remains?

Are the borders clean & white, or are they dirty?

Finally, who is the seller of the card? If on ebay, what is their feedback level? Basically, how reputable are they? I would much rather spend a bit more and deal with a known reputable seller, than take a chance with "Bubba's Auctions".

Steve

I was waiting for that response, the premise is not flawed. I am talking about a general population of say psa 4's. While one specific psa 4 might be a bit different from another psa 4 in general they are graded using identified guidelines and fall within a specific framework to be graded a psa 4. That's whats meant by commoditized. Think for instance about cocoa beans one bean might be a bit better than another but still fall within the grade "A" classification . A psa 4 is essentially a psa 4 and if you sell enough of them the quality averages out.

If you can establish that one seller only sells the highest quality cards within that specific stratification of say a psa 4 then you can be right (or it can be viable that they garner higher prices than another seller) but I think to believe that one seller takes the time or rejects other cards that are considered weak for the grade I think is naive despite what they might claim in their descriptions.

Thoughts?

I understand what you're trying to say in principle, but I think the argument is weakened by drawing an analogy to real commodities like cocoa beans. In a single bushel, there's what, maybe 100K beans? Of course minor differences between single beans are not likely to be noticed and they are purchased according to their broad classification. However, in any given year, a T206 Red Cobb PSA 4 might see 20-30 examples change hands, and these occasions are infrequent enough whereby the individual quality of each card can be assessed and valued relative to other examples.

If you're talking about PSA 9 Ken Griffey Juniors, where 100's might be sold in a given year, then I agree with your point, that prices should generally fall within a very tight range. But I believe it's hard to apply that argument to pre-war where populations are significantly lower.

We know Cortney was pals with Brent. Do we know if the consignor John P. was friends with or knew Brent? Was John P. friends with or did he know Cortney?

Wouldn't that be called an auctions "mailing list"?

In an ideal world, yes.

LOL. No. There will be no bidding anywhere on anything.

It is unfortunate that the previous thread was locked because, in our opinion, there is no reason to limit honest and thoughtful dialogue. We truly value the unbiased nature of the discussion boards, so intentionally try to only chime in when needed. This will be our only post on this thread.

Many of you have raised concerns about the request that Brent made to Cortney that he place another bid to become the high bidder. The honest truth is that the request was made because had he not taken a place as the high bidder we would have blocked him for string bidding. It was a request simply to enable Cortney to remain allowed to bid with PWCC. It was an ill-advised in hindsight, hasn't happened before, and won't happen again. It is absolutely not a normal request, because Cortney is not a normal bidder.

Cortney has since been blocked completely from participating in PWCC auctions, yet we are closely working with him to close a balance from previous purchases and consignments. Additionally, we are working to ensure that he is properly refunded for a recent purchase that unfortunately had a compromised PSA case and a counterfeit card. After this refund is complete, and balance is closed, our business dealings with him will be complete.

Betsy Huigens

Betsy,

Out of curiosity, how do you know Cortney would have been able to become the top bidder at a reason amount? How do you know the high bidder at the time you made that request had not already put in an atomic top all type of bid? Would you have required him to pay even if he ended up winning at that high bid?

I understand that string bidding can be a sign of shill bidding so what is everyone's thoughts on a legitimate bidder using string bidding in an attempt to scare other users away from an auction?

DJ

I string bid all the time. Not because I'm shilling, but because I'm on the phone a lot for work and have several monitors going. When I'm multitasking and on autopilot I tend to just click on the bid button several times rather than type in a number. I never even thought of it as being an issue until I saw a couple of these threads.

Just had to quote that.

Why would you click on it several times?

In the name of honest dialogue who did the work on the wwg dimaggio?

"there is no reason to limit honest and thoughtful dialogue" and you "truly value the unbiased nature of discussion boards" yet you are not interested in participating in said dialogue and you pick and choose which questions to answer.

Exactly.

In the name of thoughtful dialogue you sell many very high end cards and obviously are aware of the huge issue with compromised or fake slabs in that market segment. How did cortney,s card get through your screening process and what went wrong? How do you know if it is an isolated incident?

Bs meter go off? Lol.

Auctions and Collusion
 

Auctions will always be susceptible to manipulation from collusion. In a fixed price scenario, the sale price is determined only by the seller and the buyer – a truly arms-length scenario. However, in an auction scenario, the sale price is determined by the seller, the buyer and the second highest bidder. The second highest bidder has no risk, allowing: (1) the seller and the second highest bidder to collude to raise the hammer price or (2) the buyer and the would-be second highest bidder to collude to lower the hammer price. Case 1 is the classic shill bidding scenario. In Case 2, consider a case where two “friends” who have the same collecting interests agree that one of them will bid in a particular auction and the other will refrain, thereby reducing the hammer price.

Even though I love winning auctions below my “max bid” as much as the next guy, I believe this collusion is why eBay has trended toward a fixed pricing model and why that is probably where things are likely trending long term.

Unless someone can come-up with a solution to the collusion problem, of course.

Sorry PWCC but between string bidding and bid retractions, bid retractions are way, way, way more important to stop than string bidding. Yet you continue to focus on the former.

Get serious about banning anyone with >1 bid retraction in the past 6 months and maybe we'll take your comments seriously. Compared to banning those who retract bids, worrying about string bidding is a waste of time.

jeff

Because he "Found" the top bid by string bidding. The next bid was less than the minium bid so you in essence have found the top bid. If he bids one more time then he would have become the high bidder. Cortney knew exactly what he was doing when he did that, he'd been warned not to do it. No matter what you think of PWCC I don't know how anyone can come to any other conclusion as to what was being discussed in those two text shots that Cortney posted. PWCC should have cancelled his bids instead of asking him to take the top bid.

And once again the focus is being shifted from the real issue here. A card was purchased, doctored and somehow got into a PSA 7 slab when you or I would never have gotten that grade if we'd presented it to PSA.

First off, I want to thank the one who enlightened me on this post by PWCC (Brent)........

Now Brent, I promised to keep quiet about a few things that I know you don't want on here, as long as there was no more "mud slinging or trash talk" about me, but if you keep this up, I'll be back. The drama that comes with these forums is not for me, which is why I backed away; and is highly unprofessional. You're working closely with me BECAUSE YOU'RE BEING FORCED TO and are only taking action BECAUSE YOU'RE BEING FORCED TO.

Also, after TODAY, (with the help of a very high ranking authority figure), our debt is settled once you send me my cards. It only took getting them involved to work out in 2 days what you wouldn't invoice in 4 months, yet wanted to slam me on as a "very large unpaid debt".

Would you like me to enlighten these people about "the recent purchase" and what else is entailed? Piss me off. I think it's clear who WON this war by how THIS DAY ended!!!!! I will not mention names, b/c that was an ill advised choice in the only other thread that I've EVER been involved in, but I absolutely will enlighten them on other "recent purchases". Keep it up hoss. I'm trying to play nice, but I will fight back and throw a lot more into this fire.

Heck, I smell round 3 :)

If brent just acknowledged selling a counterfeit card in a compromised holder i sure would think it would be appropriate to hear more detail and to hear from pwcc about it, instead of the this is our last post noise. People need to understand this as much as possible.

Mmm,,, as the plot thickens. :rolleyes:
I honestly think Brent/PWCC need to really come clean here if they hope to save face, if it's not too late already?

I agree, and as I alluded to in the other thread, there are 3 players in this fiasco, not just 2, and so far, we are only getting tidbits and not the details we need to piece this together once and for all.

If it's a higher dollar card or something I'm seriously after I'll snipe it, but when I'm impulse bidding I'll typically just click until I'm the high bid. There's no strategy or malice behind it, it's more out of laziness when I'm on the phone or watching tv or whatever.


I agree with this 100%. I was outbid on a card this morning then the guy retracted. I clicked on his history for the heck of it and he has 43 retractions in the past 6 months. Ebay obviously doesn't care about that.

Nor does, despite what they say, PWCC apparently. :confused: