I've noticed a few people in this thread stating that they recently sold items that sold at low prices at a few different auction houses.
I believe that one of the lesser spoken about issues caused by shill bidding is a false value of an item. For instance, if a card sells for a $1000 in an auction but was shilled up to this amount, most buyers do not realize it was shilled to that value and assume a recent value for this card is $1000; however, without shilling, perhaps the card was really around $750.
Well, now this card (same grade) is auctioned in the future at another auction house. There are two possibilities: 1. If the auction house is dirty - they shill it up to the $1000 mark with the following result - buyer happy(bought a card at recent sales mark, seller happy sold card at recent mark, and house happy - optimized profit and look like a competitive auction house for future consignors. OR 2. Auction house is clean and does not shill and sells card at $750 with following results - buyer very happy and seller disappointed and going to different auction house in future.
Then future consignors go back to shilling auction houses because they want to optimize their sale and thinking clean auction house at fault. BUT - the clean auction house did optimize their sale - it was just sold at real market value and many of the previous sales were inflated due to shilling and causing the seller to have false hopes on value.
Shilling auctions causes many issues - one being false market value of items. Then when an auction house does not meet previous sales - people assume it was their fault. With shilling occurring in auction houses and ebay - when an item sells for less than it has previously, it may just have sold at the real (unskilled) market value by an honest businessman.
Hope this rambling made some sense.
|