Quote:
Originally Posted by ElCabron
I'm not sure why you took that question as a personal attack because I think it's a fair question to ask. I am not at all interested in hearing what shill bidders think about any of this. I think a lot of people who are not on the list have not chimed in at all due to the fact that they, too, have shilled items, either in Mastro during the years the records were destroyed, or with other auction houses. There are far more offenders than what appears on that list.
Keep in mind, that list is just 2 years from just one auction house. There are probably quite a few board members who have shill bidding skeletons in their closets and are hoping everyone would just drop this issue and move on to funner things.
I disagree with most of what you say in points 1 and 2 and I don't understand why so many people are coming to the defense of the people named on the list when they are perfectly capable of doing that themselves. If you think there are examples where something on the list might have looked like shill bidding, but was not, please let us know. Perhaps there are answers to those questions. If someone has been incorrectly added to that list, let us know. Or at least let us know why they can't come here and question it on their own.
But your point about there being different degrees is valid. Is Peter S. the same as Doug Allen? No way. Not even in the same ballpark. That's why he's not going to jail. But he's still a shill bidder. There are some examples of multiple offenders that were undeniably involved in shill bidding, though. Are you really suggesting that JC Clarke, or Kevin Keating, or Dave Forman shouldn't be on the list?
I would have thought that anyone who looked at the list or knew anything about Doug Allen would be able to easily put into perspective the differing levels of criminals that made the list.
Doug Allen > JC Clarke > Peter Spaeth
-Ryan
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Maybe my posts have not been clear, or maybe you are ascribing some preconceptions on them/me, so I will respond to you once more to see if I can clarify:
A. I'm not a shill bidder. I've only sent about 8 items to auction houses in the past 20 years, so I'm not anything close to being a "frequent flyer." If possible, let's focus on the issue, and the points raised, rather than on me.
B. There are only about 5 names on the list that I even recognized, and nobody whom I have spoken to in the past 20-odd years. I did do business with one of those named back in the 1980s a few times. So I cannot comment on who is/isn't there.
C. I'm not defending anybody because I don't know the players or their crimes, or the validity of the list for that matter. For those same reasons I'm not comfortable condemning them either. Maybe more (substantiated) info will come out and that might change... we'll see how this plays out.
Others here are much quicker to judge and that's up to them. If you want to take issue with the fact I'm not grabbing my pitchfork and joining you, that's fine. If it turns out people were using bidders' maximum bids against them, I'll join you and bring a howitzer.
When you say: "But your point about there being different degrees is valid..." that's good because that was about 90% of what I was trying to get across.