I do not believe you lost that auction to a shill, and that if it was your intent all along to place the bid you made then you still would have lost at that price. I also see from Card target that the sale price was not out of line with other auction prices for the card in that grade.
I do believe there was a shill in this auction though: the zero feedback bidder who bid a dozen times in the last six minutes with more than half of those in the last ten seconds and with what may have been multiple snipes--a fairly complex strategy for a zero feedback "newbie" (he bid two dozen times or so in total, all on the last day). To me that looks like someone trying to prop up their card to a hidden reserve. This is different than the type of shilling that tries to create a frenzy or artificial interest, as again the bids were so late it did not really give time for reaction. Had this bidder not participated, I believe the card would have gone for the same price, but it still is worth your scrutiny. Also note the bidder who made six bids in the last minute, all in one, two or three cent raises. That is just bizarre, although I have been told that tapatalk on cellphones allows you to bump by such small increments with the touch of a key, but why bother if that is all the farther you are "moving the chains"?
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Now watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal
Won't you sign up your name? We'd like to feel you're acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable
If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.- Ulysses S. Grant, 18th US President.
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