shill bidders?
 

Just won this 1914 Cracker Jack Joe Wood SGC A from Probstein123. I had read on this board that some suspected of shill bidding so I wanted to test it out. I had the high bid for the most of the auction at $278 and then two suspect bidders appeared in the last minute and systematically bid up the price by $10 increments, so I increased my bid to $500 to see how far they would go. It was like a bot was bidding until the auction ended creeping the price up in small increments until the auction ended at $395. Does anyone recognized these ebay users? i***u ( private ) and t***e .

for t***e his history reads:
30-Day Summary
Total bids: 27
Items bid on: 4
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 59%
Bid retractions: 0
Bid retractions (6 months): 0

for i***u

30-Day Summary
Total bids: 20
Items bid on: 20
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 35%
Bid retractions: 0
Bid retractions (6 months): 1

I think it's strange that someone would have that high of a bidding % with one seller. Either there's a small team of people with multiple ebay account systematically bidding up these auctions or there's "bots" that are programmed to do so. It was only a $120 raise for this particular auction but that adds up to big time $$$ spread out over hundreds or thousands of auctions over time.

Sorry, I don't see it. Most every item on Ebay is bid up in small increments nowadays. Especially with the quick bid again button Ebay has now.

Percentages are not unusual, they are only 30 day summaries.

A+ for effort but no conspiracy there. Wish I had the free time to dig like that and even post the screen cap to boot.

its well known that probsteins auctions are shilled. I just have a max price and put that in with 3 sec. left and if I win good, if not then whatever. the worst thing that you can do is put in a bid with any time left which would give the shills enough time to jack your bid up. I always bid with extreme caution on auctions that are sold on consignment.

Is it?

it is on BO, FCB + CU forums

If someone collects a fairly narrow group of stuff, like only crackerjacks, those bid percentages are reasonable.

The one tap bidding really messes up what have become the traditional ebay signs of shilling.

And there isn't the usual high number of retracted bids.

There's a lot of stuff that's probably going on with many of the big sellers auctions on Ebay, and they could all do a better job of keeping an eye on it. But I don't think it happened here.

Steve B

So you're saying the auction above was shilled?

To me, red flags are where bidders not only have a high percentage of bidding with the seller, but ALSO have a high number of retractions -- suggesting they are consignors who run auctions up until they top the high bidder, then retract; or set a high target to induce other bidders to go higher and then retract. This particular auction does not seem suspicious.

I think (could be wrong) that he is saying it is well known about the alleged Probstein auction shilling issues on those forums, not necessarily this one auction.

There was a thread a while back where someone accused Sean/Greg Morris of shilling a bunch of 1960 Topps Tatoos. The bidder had sveral retractions, a high percentage with GM and seemed to bid often. It was later established that the bidder wasn't shilling. I don't think it's nearly as easy to spot shill bidders than members lead to believe. A good start:

A high percentage of bids with the seller; and
A large number of retractions; and
Low feedback; and
Whole number bids in a sporadic increments.

I only see maybe one of those things here. Certainly not enough to out an auction and accuse people of shilling, but what do I know.

There is shill bidding and fraud in Probstein auctions. Obviously not every auction but fraud exists. Not maybe, definitely.

I was commenting in general but whenever I see a private bidder and a another bidder with that high a % bid on the same seller, red flags go up.

I agree there will be cases where something looks like shill bidding but in fact isn't. But there are so many of these suspicious-looking auctions, usually with the same sellers, that I think it's a near certainty that at least some of them are not innocent. If it looks like a duck, it usually is a duck, even if once in a while it might not be.

That's a pretty big generalization. I know of a couple people in this very thread that have consigned to Probstein, so to imply that his auctions are shilled would be to accuse these members of shilling.

Some auctions, it's obvious. This one isn't (at least I don't think so) and there has been apparent fraud, but with 57,000+ completed auctions in his completed listing, I would be shocked if 1% of those auctions were shilled.

Your first summation is absurd. Just because someone says they think there is shilling in Probstein auctions doesn't mean they are making specific allegations against any one person. No kidding it's obvious in some auctions. It's not only obvious it's hysterical. I would be shocked if your 1% isn't way, way low.

That's not what he said. He said his auctions are shilled.

Just like if I were to say "It is known Brockelman & Luckey Auctions are shilled" (they're not btw), I'm not saying that I think maybe one or two might have been possibly shilled. I'm saying your auctions are shilled. ***Again, I don't think they are.

I was just taken aback by the careless generalization.

Also, the 1% could very well be low. He has quite a few bad apples.

Agree completely.

Yes, including the bad apple in the mirror.

What if the price is so low, the consignor, or seller buys it back?

You're doing good so far.

I think it's an inherent problem with selling consigned items on EBay . How can he know if the owners are bidding or not ? And if he did can he stop every auction ? It's different if someone can prove the seller is getting others to put bids in to jack up the prices .

As has been said many times, all an ebay seller has to do is block anyone with more than xx retractions in the last 6 mos. Put that number at more than 5 and at least some of the shilling would be more difficult. As it is, it is a joke the way some of the bidders in those auctions retract bids. I haven't seen too much blame put on the sellers for actually doing the shilling but more for the blind eye they seem to turn on it.

I feel like we re-hash this issue every few months. Probstein himself may not be shilling his own auctions, but he turns a blind eye when his consignors do. It was pointed out to Probstein over a year and a half ago that Panky was shilling his own items (that’s when you could still track members and purchases by feedback) and he did nothing about it. Probstein was told what was going on, shown proof, yet still let Panky continue to consign and continue to shill his auctions. What more do you need to know about Probstein?

Also, as Leon mentioned, he could block bidders with 'X' amount of bid retractions. People can choose to do business with him or not. It doesn’t matter to me. As for me, I refuse to do business with someone like that.

That said, I don't believe the auction in question was shilled.

I would love to see the actual screen cap where I could see the time stamps on the bids (it is too small to read currently)...if it was a bot, the time stamps might be meaningful...

Joshua

I figured it was people on a payroll, no way to have that many shills a' shilling

I've tried to enlarge the bidding time stamps. Let's see if that works. I think there's "bot" technology that used to shill bid. Would love to hear if anyone has heard of how this works.

The OP said it was strange that there would be such a high % of bids with this seller, but there really isn't much strange when you look at the very small sample size. One of these guys only bid on 4 items in the past 30 days and had only 27 bids total. It stands to reason that if he was really interested in this one card more than the other three items that would explain the 14 bids on this auction. Same with the other bidder--only 20 bids total in the past month, seven of which were with Probstein. Hardly eyebrow-raising IMO.

As someone posted, the tap bidding feature on cell phones has made it tougher to gauge a bidder's motives. I have limited to no understanding how it works, but apparently just tapping one key will bump up the bid one small increment, and it may be easier to just keep tapping until you're ahead than to enter a specific max dollar amount on your phone. That would explain how they are entered so rapid-fire also-- not a bot but someone on a cell phone tapping every couple of seconds.

To the OP,

I was looking at your completed sales, and here is a CJ that you sold that shows the same two bidders that you're questioning. So, I don't think they're shills or bots, they're probably just CJ collectors like yourself.

t***e was the winner of the item, so you should already have his contact information if you want to know who he is.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1914-Cracker...0#ht_86wt_1220

LOL.. I get it from the professionals on Wall Street then the sellers give me the business on EBay. I wonder what % of people will cheat you if they know they can get away with it.

I don't agree that shillers have a large # of retractions. Some do but most don't.

As far as the Sean/Greg accusations many of their auctions had some crazy bid histories. The "random" bid histories I posted in that thread actually all came from Greg's eBay listings auctions.

Agreed. I tend to buy from the same sellers for items like Imperial Tobacco lacrosse cards and C46s, etc. The stats don't always tell the whole story.