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T206 Dave I believe Ebay's new policy has done nothing but encourage shill bidding. I know a local dealer who was jumping for joy now that people won't be able to track his 5 different screen names on ebay. I personally outed 2 sellers last week, and their accounts have been suspended I think. when I went to check on them they both say their unregitered users now. I have also noticed some particular patterns developing in T206 auctions by about 3-4 sellers with very high feedback. The bidding patterns were odd to say the least.....not definitive of shill bidding, but it was enough for me to retract my bids all auctions I was bidding on. I then went back to those auctions and noticed that the cards had been bid up to my old price alittle to fast for me to believe something fishy wasn't going on. My brother and I spend a few hours a week outing shill bidders for Ebay in the Sports Memorabilia category. It is a big problem. Feedback is now virtually meaningledd to me as one of the sellers that was busted by Ebay last week had over 300 positives. Two of the sellers I think have fishy bidding going on in their T206 auctions are power sellers with feedback in the thousands. It's really depressing for a collector like me. By the way, Ebay never informed me of any action being taken against either of the sellers I reported....matter of fact they haven't even emailed me back at all and it's been over 10 days.
AS for following certain bidders handles..I think that's pretty lame. If you don't have the time or aren't willing to look for things that "you" collect yourself , then why do you bother. I'm thinking only re-sellers or dealers benefit from this kind of behavior