Bidding on your own auction
 

I don't understand this, unless to drive up the bid prices..? Look at this Probstein123 listing which ends tonight...

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=380538844655

y***y (private) bid $189 on 12/18 - - only issue is y***y (private) won this very card on 12/2/12 for $355! (see below link)

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=251189941256

So he winds winning the card, consigns with Rick - and bids on his own card to drive more bids/up the price..?

Just asking because I have no clue
 

Since eBay went to the whole bidder privacy thing years ago, and your bids no longer show up under your eBay name, do you always have the same cryptic handle no matter what you bid on? Guess I've never paid that much attention, but if I bid on something last year, and someone saw I was bidder A****Z, would I still be bidder A****Z a year later when I bid on something again, or are those things randomly generated?

Sorry, just don't have a clue about this.

Yes your ebay scrambled ID shows up the same, mine is always the same even when checking VCP on cards I purchased.

I think they are random but not 100% sure.

+1, same goes for card target

Shill
 

Good question - I know I always come up as o***o along with my feedback score (I don't know what people do to get listed as "private"?)

Now, they may assign "o***o" to others as well, I'm not sure..? But this is too much of a coincidence -- y***y (private) wins the card on 12/2, consigns the card for re-sell to Probstein123 and then y***y (private) shows up bidding on it..? Wow.

I've reported it, called eBay - they did confirm that y***y (private) won the card on 12/2 and has now bid on that very same card in this current auction Probstein123 has. Unknown if Rick is aware, that's why I called eBay instead of just reporting it as a shill bid.

Somebody should probably contact Probstein about it. I doubt he keeps track of all of his consignors ID's, or checks the bid history of every one of his auctions.

It's been mentioned before, this guy is highly suspicious. He's bid on every T206 and any other card type.


Bidding Details


Bidder Information
Bidder: s***s( 442)
Feedback: 100%Positive
Item description: T206 Miller Huggins Portrait Cincinnati HOF PSA 2 GOOD
Bids on this item: 3

30-Day Summary
Total bids: 1041
Items bid on: 469
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 78%
Bid retractions: 3
Bid retractions (6 months): 42

78% of all his bids are with that seller?

is that correct?

Bidding
 

I have contacted Probstein to advise as suggested, he may indeed not be aware - that's why I didn't just report it as shilling (as that may suggest he's aware, instigating, etc).

FYI - y***y (private) seller/bidder is "myboydannyroy67"

Seems quite possible that this account is a shill account, it "accidentally" won for him the first time, so now he is re-listing the card.

"30-Day Summary
Total bids: 1041
Items bid on: 469
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 78%
Bid retractions: 3
Bid retractions (6 months): 42"

This is not a normal ebay account. At least from what I can see.

He has retracted 42 bids in the last 6 months. How is this allowed?

Didnt do a very good job as he still lost a few hundred on the sale no?

edited I see it has NOT yet ended

I don't know. Seems to me, all bids are good bids according to Ebay.

Does anybody think it's a coincidence that about the same time Ebay made bidding accounts largely anonymous, they also lifted restrictions on bid retractions?

When a bidder has that many retractions it means one of two things. They are shilling auctions or they are tampering with auctions. Not good for buyers or sellers in the overall scheme of things.

I don't mind making bidders names anonymous, because many bidders prefer to stay anonymous if possible...........that generally holds for any type of auction.

However, to make the habitual act of retracting bids an accepted part of the auction process, strikes me as Ebay putting their head in the sand as a way of defending themselves by telling people "we didn't know these types of practices were going on." It's their way of not having to deal with the problem.

Sure, they have rules against "shilling" and "tampering with auctions", but they rarely ever acknowledge it, except in very extreme and blatant circumstances.

Trivia, just for the record:

-- "masked" eBay IDs do not always come up the same for the same bidder (although they're consistent within any single auction).
Our eBay ID has shown up masked a couple of different ways.

-- a "masked" ID can represent any number of eBay bidders -- there are only about 1,600 possible two-character combinations.

Well all I can say is mine show up the same and have so for a long time (and I checked about 20 more purchases too) -


2/4/10 eBay Image macbruce11 y***t 12 $261.00

11/28/10 eBay Image davidbvintage y***t 1 $22.00

10/23/11 eBay Image cardsandbrowns y***t 9 $47.00

12/8/12 eBay Auction | Image dslsports y***t 9 $5.50

looks like Y****Y is bidding on many Probsteins 1914's...usually one of the early bidders...

why would someone bid 69.99 or 89.99? does this person like losing by .01
?
i have been on ebay many many years and never bid this amount (.99) when trying to win a card, i cant figure it out...

never have seen a different masked id for one particular buyer, and it is the sames ones who keep outbidding me!

Hmmm...this isn't looking so good?! Time will reveal all!

In my mind there is only one reason for someone to consistently bid .01 lower than a round figure and that is because in most situations someone else has bid an exact amount and you want to extract maximum value. As mentioned you bid 89.99 because more than likely someone has bid $90.00. If you are a true buyer and want to win a card you bid $90.01 not 89.99. It would be interesting to see if this pattern occurred with other sales from that same seller. Hope we don't find out this is another "black eye" for an ebay seller.

Butch,

Can you provide an example?

lol I have also never bid adding a .99, it does make a lot of sense if you were to shill you would want to bid just under whole numbers as most are probably like me bidding whats easy- $70 or 90

Hmmm the plot thickens, I see one consistent bidder on this sellers auctions is i***g. I just quickly looked at 3 of this sellers active t206 auctions and see that i***g has bid on all three.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/T206-Miller-...item5899e35a62

http://www.ebay.com/itm/T206-Josh-De...item53f23b8b30

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=380542032273



That in itself means absolutely nothing i***g could be bidding on every t206 out there for all I know. However, looking a bit further I see that in the past 6 months i***g has 133 bid retractions. Here are the stats I see for that bidder:

30-Day Summary
Total bids: 72
Items bid on: 72
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 25%
Bid retractions: 8
Bid retractions (6 months): 133

Something is starting to smell a bit fishy.

one of the many perks of paying someone else to sell your lower valued cards...so you can shill the hell out of it. otherwise why would anyone consign $50-$100 cards to these places?

Whats new....another supposedly reputable vintage card seller with really high feedback is caught shilling or having his friends or relatives shill his auctions ...wow stop the presses:D Collecting cards is becoming kind of depressing these days

This one does not look like a straight out shiller to me.

Looks more like a tamperer

A few possibilities:

He pulls his bids when he finds out something else he likes, since he's usually only putting in one bid per auction.

He is really, really interested for some reason in seeing a stable market for T206's, and is misguidedly throwing in bids he thinks the cards should go for (thereby protecting the value of his own collection) and pulling them back when it looks like he might actually win.

Lastly, he is a bit of a shiller. He's not running up auctions but he has consignments with this seller and is placing a single bid on his own cards as sort of a reserve.

Whatever it is, it shouldn't be allowed by Ebay. I'm not sure it's something I would crucify the seller for without knowing more.

If I was Probstein and the same guy was retracting bids in my auctions on a regular basis, he'd be on the blocked bidder list very quickly. It's not hard to keep track of...........you get an e-mail from Ebay every time it happens.

I only stated what I saw don't think I crucified anyone. I have bot from this seller in the past both on eBay and in person and have enjoyed the interactions. I hope some of the things pointed out are proven to be coincidences.

Started smelling fishy in the Art Shell thread a few months ago (pank21). Now just downright rotten!!!

These are exactly the reasons why I will never bid with Rick Probstein.

Shady.

Just making a general observation. I didn't mean to imply you yourself, were "crucifying" the seller in question.

It does merit being pointed out. Whether there's anything untoward going on with Probstein or not, these type of bidding practices are ultimately damaging to the marketplace. I'd like to see these types of bidders taking some flack for this.

It's becoming a common trend nowadays, whether it involves actual shilling or not.

My masked ID has not changed. Just about all of my purchases have been captured by Card Target and the prices paid are accurate. Now who am I?

The encryption masking involves several algorithms depending on the number of characters in your username. I haven't figured it all out, but I have a pretty good idea. It isn't rocket science IMO.

If Probstein were an honest seller, he wouldn't want shill bidders continually manipulating his auctions...assuming he himself isn't the shill bidder.

That's a good point. Retractions happen from time to time, but if it is frequent from the same bidder, or worse, from a consignor.........he should be blocking that bidder and/or refusing those consignments.

He does have a somewhat huge operation going and I understand some things can get overlooked, but these are somewhat easy to notice things.

Retractions are the key. The Bid %'s Ebay gives, really means nothing IMO, unless it is in tandem with other fishy practices.

Again, just tangential trivia, but since you asked --
MW1, all we can tell ya is basically what we already said and what we've seen in auctions in which we've bid.
-- our bids have shown up as both "u***u" and "u***7"
-- we've also seen the bids of a friend and fellow Net54 member showing up with two specific characters in several auctions
(we decline to specify the characters without his permission) and those same two characters transposed in other auctions.

Presumably, there's something in the eBay encryption programme that will change the "standard" masked ID for a second bidder
if another bidder, whose masked ID appears as the same two characters as those normally used to mask the second bidder,
has already bid in that same auction.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Quote:
Originally Posted by Butch7999
Trivia, just for the record:
-- "masked" eBay IDs do not always come up the same for the same bidder (although they're consistent within any single auction).
Our eBay ID has shown up masked a couple of different ways.
-- a "masked" ID can represent any number of eBay bidders -- there are only about 1,600 possible two-character combinations.

Quote:
Originally Posted by MW1
Butch,
Can you provide an example?

question:
 

in todays day of hidden ebay bidder's IDs, why do some bidders show up as "private" still?

what is the benefit of this? y*****y is listed as "private"...

I have a couple regulars who are "Private". I know from speaking to one of them, It's so they can leave feedback and others can't see what they have been bidding on through their own feedback history.

The ID's aren't always a mystery either. If you already know somebody's Ebay handle you pretty much have free reign to track what they have been bidding on.

Help me out with this?
 

Ok - so I've purchased some items from this seller in the past. I looked up this item that I've purchased, and look at the underbidder's activity with this seller...

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

It says that there is 100% bidding activity with this seller. Am I reading this right? Does this mean that this buyer only bids on items from this seller, or am I missing out on something?

This card went for more that what I expected it to go, but I guess that doesn't mean anything!?!

that buyer really likes that seller :eek:

Honestly, these shill bidders do a terrible job covering their tracks. I mean, if you don't want to be seen only bidding on items from one seller, why not just put in a bid on items from different sellers that they are positive they won't win! That's make it look less fishy honestly, they just do a poor job.

It means he hasn't bid on/with anyone else in the last 30 days. This may have cost you a few bucks on this auction (assuming it was shilled) as you may have otherwise won the card for the next increment over $26 and change.

What's more suspicious about this is another under bidder s***s (445) with 43 bid retractions in the last 6 months! This was brought up before by other members and in previous replies - I don't get this at all - - I've never had any! 1 or 2 seems like a lot - 43..?! :eek:

s***s (445)
30-Day Summary
Total bids: 967
Items bid on: 416
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 76% Help
Bid retractions: 4
Bid retractions (6 months): 43

that looks really suspicious. I wonder how many of those bids he placed were winning bids.

You're assuming they care, I'd be surprised of they do. It seems that ebay doesn't care and neither do the preponderance of bidders, as most don't know. Ebay provides a nearly perfect playground for miscreants. I hate to say it but I would assume I'm shilled on anything that I do anything but snipe on. I would bet I'm right more often than I'm wrong.

As for this seller, I'm not sure what he could do other than to refuse consignments from anyone he has confirmed bid on their own items.

Chasing Classic Cars
 

Have you guys seen Wayne Carini on his show "Chasing Classic Cars"? He's the winner and the loser and the consignor and the consignee. Good show.

In Texas, it's perfectly fine to point to the back of the room at no one in particular and say "Hoah!" at an imaginary bidder to git the auction going.

Just looked at my feedback. One purchase from Probstein123 this year.
One underbidder (y***s) with a feedback over 1200 bid with a price ending in .99 also. Feedback percentage with seller: 79%! Zero bid retractions.
A quick search reveals this bidder's ID. I won't post it.
Odd to say the least.
Looking at the variety of stuff y***s has won from him - just weird.

A friend of mine just won an unrelated card from him this week. The under bidder has private FB and nearly 90% with this seller... Funny .99 bid amounts again.

Interesting is that I would read several threads like this on the Collectors Universe forum. Those threads would quickly disappear. The cult like following threads endure though.

sounds like a friend or relative of the seller. Some of the shill accounts that big sellers use have high enough feedback of their own that it can throw off the casual observer and have them believing that nothing suspicious is going on when a guy bids .99 increments loads of times in one auction and has 75%-100% bidding history with one seller. Remember...there are flea marketers that have 7,8,9,10 different accounts on ebay why should it be any different for a dishonest baseball card dealer who is struggling to make a dime the Honest way. The fact that Ebay allows them to shill with impunity is no excuse for them doing it , I think it sucks and they ruin a neat hobby and discourage newbies from getting involved at all. This discusion has been had over and over though on this board about shilling at auction houses and on Ebay by supposed reputable sellers with great reputations in the hobby. Shilling has only gotten worse and some cases more brazen...if we really wanted to a bunch of people who know what they are doing could probably put a list together of Ebay sellers thay believe engage in nefarious activity, or we could just start telling people why we don't or won't bid with certain sellers
*signed fuming mad Dave in Ohio *

It was easy to spot shilling ten years ago. Not so easy anymore, and that's the way ebay wants it. Consignors and sellers are happy, customers also - as long as they can add cool stuff to their collections, they'll turn a blind eye. That leaves no one upset with the situation other than the smaller sellers, and ebay doesn't want smaller sellers.

If it makes you feel any better, ebay is squeezing out the auction format in favor of the Amazon model, but no telling how long that will take.

Haha. Try that and you'll make more enemies than friends.

Scott, I suspect you are right on all points made. I think Ebay will soon be a buy it now web site with no real auctions at all.
I think discussing the shilling activity we have experienced on Ebay is a good thing in that it alerts others to what may be going on and may make people pay more attention to who is bidding against them. Some of these sellers read this forum and may even be members so one might think that they would reply to these posts. The only seller I remember replying to posts about shilling was the guy who sells the Helmar cards that are made to look old.

This stinks

This guy is a Legend on the PSA boards..

There was a recent thread " why doesn't everyone consign with probstein?"..agh

First of all, on this forum, these threads won't go poof. Secondly, make sure your name is in your post if you are making negative (or positive) claims concerning a person or business. Otherwise, on that front, we are wide open.

I don't think it's Probstein doing anything himself (or their self). I do think he could be more diligent on watching for this shady bidding that seems to be going on and helping to avoid it. He might get so many consignments that he can't keep up with the shilling of his consignors? Maybe this is one of the reasons some of the biggest ebay sellers get so many consignments AND their prices often seem to be above market. This is also a reason you can't just use VCP blindly. You really need to look at the auction, other historical sales and the card characteristics to make a valuation decision.