PWCC & eBay - help us improve the hobby

[Brent Huigens]

Dear Fellow Collectors,

I need to get something off my chest. My general policy is to let the message boards run free, but occasionally I need to make a post where I defend accusations, otherwise some folks may consider our lack of response as sign of guilt.

Do some folks really believe that we manipulate our scans?
Do some believe we orchestrate and/or tolerate shill bidding in our auctions?

For those who know us, or know me personally, it’s clear that these acts of fraud are simply not in my DNA. For those who don’t know me or PWCC and who choose the conspiracy theory approach, I offer logic to refute these claims. The logic is this… we only clear a couple % on each sale, so we simply don’t have the time or resources to manipulate individual auctions. Not to mention that the risk associated with trying to manipulate an auction is immeasurable; it would destroy our brand and everything I’ve worked hard to accomplish.

Our Scans:
Regarding our scanning, all I can say is that we use the same settings for every card we scan in each auction. Never do we go in and adjust the settings for an individual card. If you don’t like our scans, I suppose you can accuse us of having bad scans, but please forgo the accusation that we are manipulating them artificially. We never receive returns from buyers who felt our scans were inaccurate. In fact, I just checked our return history over the last 12 months and there’s not a single instance where the bidder sights the scan as having been enhanced artificially. What does that tell you? I admit that the settings we used in prior years with old equipment was simply were not universally accurate (in my opinion); sometimes making some issues appear ‘hot’ or overly bright. In our defense, it’s hard to make one group of settings that optimize every card issue from 1888-2014. As technology has improved, so have our scanners and we feel that our current images are extremely accurate. If folks are upset with past images, I sincerely apologize and perhaps those folks prefer our current representations more.

Policing Bidders:
On the topic of bid behavior it’s particularly frustrating to be accused of auction manipulation when I actually feel we are working to improve bidder behavior more than anyone else. It's impossible to watch every auction, but we police the bid as much as we can and have blocked more bidder ids for bad behavior than anyone else I know. As our company has matured we have had various policies come and go, some of which have proven more intelligent than others. For example one program I regret most was from 2009/2010 when we allowed consignors to place a single ‘reserve bid’ on a consigned lot if they received approval from us. This sort of thing was more-or-less accepted back in 2009 and we didn't think anything of it at the time (hidden reserves are still part of the hobby with many auction houses). In hindsight this wasn’t a smart program to have engaged in because it opened the door to abuse. We made a mistake offering this as a service and ended it in 2010. We certainly didn’t want to hurt the hobby and we have not offered this option for over 5 years. This is just an example of where we admit to being imperfect and we sincerely hope folks don’t hold this against us. Every business goes through a maturation and we continue to mature alongside the hobby at large.

eBay & the Hobby
It’s important to remember that eBay is a public auction venue, so when dealing with the public, bidding isn’t always squeaky clean. There are a lot of eccentric behavior in the hobby and it’s not fair to accuse every instance of manipulation. In my experience, 8/10 times something that looks fishy is actually legitimate. Obviously bidder behavior on eBay isn’t perfect, but we are absolutely doing all we can to help improve the marketplace. We hope folks can view accusations that PWCC is somehow the source any bad bidder behavior as illogical; we have nothing to gain and everything to lose from such acts.

So what is PWCC doing to help?
Two weeks ago I was at the 2015 West Coast Seller Summit hosted by eBay where I spoke at length with the eBay’s Trust & Safety team regarding bidder behavior and buyer quality. I am also attending a panel discussion on 6/11 with eBay where I will again be pressing for more seller tools that help us filter and police bidding. This panel discussion will be among 200 eBay employees and I’m one of only 4 sellers who’ve been invited to offer their opinions. In particular I am working to get the following tools implemented:

a) Stricter penalties for bid retractors who don’t follow the prescribed rules
b) Much stricter penalties for users with unpaid items on their record
c) IP address monitoring to ensure two or more accounts are never placing bids on the same item
d) Contact information cross checks to ensure bad users are not able to create new accounts
e) Stricter policies on how bidders with prior bad behavior are allowed to return to bidding (.i.e. forced instant payment with vetted credit cards on file, etc)
f) Seller tools that allow us to specify which bidders are allowed to bid (relative to the number and type of infraction listed above).

*Does anyone have other ideas that I could forward on to eBay? How can we make eBay the most trusted sale environment on the internet? Please help us make it better and post your thoughts to this thread.

I again ask that folks be constructive in their comments and I will indeed follow up in a week to review all posts and issue replies where needed. We appreciate everyone’s feedback.

Brent Huigens
PWCC Auctions, LLC
brent@pwccauctions.com

[Sean1125]

Brent,

Do you use factory scanner settings?

Are you adjusting or using extra features on the technology that you have purchased?

-Contrast
-Brightness
-Dust Removal
-Threshhold
-Gamma Editor

Do you use 8, 24, or 256 bit color when scanning?

I am sure with such advanced scanners you could scan above 200-240 dpi. If not why are the scans resized?

Are you willing to scan cards at 300 dpi with factory defaults and allow zoom on your scans? If not, why not?

Invest In Baseball is committed to using factory settings on all of our scanners making very sure even a stray print mark or piece of dust is visible and uploading our original un-resized images. Does PWCC have this same level of commitment? I believe you would benefit from proper scans that allow users to zoom and view the card as if it were being louped in hand.

Edited for grammar.

Also:

In our defense, it’s hard to make one group of settings that optimize every card issue from 1888-2014

You are right. I have found after years of selling you need two settings. One for cards that have holo-foil of any sort and one that is for non-holofoil classic gloss cards. I recently checked your website and see that you break up your auctions by era. You can set up multiple profiles on any modern scanning technology and seamlessly switch back and forth with one click. You should never be using the same settings for vintage as you do with modern.

I would be happy to help if you have any questions with volume technology in an effort to keep your quality constant and maintain the current level of volume you have.

[iowadoc77]

Brent,
Thanks for your attempt to do everything you can to be above reproach. It is much appreciated. I have purchased through PWCC before and have been very pleased.
Eric

[Jacker_ Cracks]

Originally Posted by iowadoc77

Brent,
Thanks for your attempt to do everything you can to be above reproach. It is much appreciated. I have purchased through PWCC before and have been very pleased.
Eric

+1

[bbcemporium]

Sean, does it matter if the scanner settings are factory default? Shouldn't the settings be set to provide a scan that most accurately represents the card?

[3-2-count]

Originally Posted by bbcemporium

Sean, does it matter if the scanner settings are factory default? Shouldn't the settings be set to provide a scan that most accurately represents the card?

Agreed. If anyone believes factory default settings on any scanner represents a cards true look I strongly disagree. Slight adjustment is usually if not always necessary.

[ejharrington]

I just won my first card from PWCC. It looks better live than on the scan...and I bought it for much less than it cost the seller.

[AddieJoss]

I've bought some items from PWCC and been happy with my experiences. I only win a small percentage of the items I bid on as his auctions generally get higher prices than other auctions. There are many bidders like myself that search their auctions and save them as a seller to view these items. I did have one issue on one high priced card which was incorrectly graded by PSA (graded VG with paper loss) and Brent took it back with no problem.
Cory

[Griffins]

Originally Posted by 3-2-count

Agreed. If anyone believes factory default settings on any scanner represents a cards true look I strongly disagree. Slight adjustment is usually if not always necessary.

No pre press house would even use factory settings, nor would anyone that understands how to properly use a scanner. Scans are supposed to be a little flat in order to get detail in shadow and highlights, and always need a little tweeking.
The key is to make that tweeking match the image or object being scanned, and to know when to stop pushing it past accuracy.

[Joshchisox08]

Wow didn't know the owner of PWCC was on this site haha. I've got a couple of things from PWCC. Always seem to go a little higher than market value but I've never even had the thought cross my mind of fals scanning or shid billing.

I personally think it's the branding that drives the higher prices. People see PWCC and they trust the name.

[LKeeler]

I've bought numerous items from Brent, and have consigned perhaps over a hundred cards. I've never had any problems and will continue to buy from him, and consign to his auctions.

[swarmee]

I never realized in 2009-10 that PWCC permitted consignors to have a secret reserve bid, presumably against eBay's Terms of Service. Interesting.

Well, an easy thing for the people who identify shilling in his/any other auctions, is for people to report the listings to eBay and PWCC via the "Report Item" link at the right side under the box and select "Listing Practices", then "Fraudulent Listing Activities," then "Seller is using other accounts to inflate price." If people who care and are being shilled in these auctions would report it every time, eBay will be flooded with Report Item notifications. I am not sure if this would hurt Brent and his business directly; maybe he can chime in again and tell us. If it does, then it may be a solid topic of discussion at the meeting coming up with eBay's employees.

But, once reported, eBay and PWCC can check the auction history since they're being given a pointer to specific instances of presumed shill bidding.

Questions I'm interested in:
1) How often are items for certain sellers not paid for? If that number is over 10% (or on large $$ items), that would be a sign to me that shill accounts are being used and then stiffed, so that the "buyer" doesn't have to fork over cash to buy back their own card. They know you'll relist the card during your next auction.
2) Does your staff actively cross-check buyer addresses with consignor addresses of the same cards? Are they kept in the same line on your spreadsheet/database where they could be easily queried to see if your consigners are winning back their items?
3) If the top bidder does not pay, do you offer to underbidders? If so, this would also spur shill bidding. You could make a policy that you will never make offers to underbidders. Most bidders are wary of receiving "2nd chance" offers, figuring they were bid up in the first place.
4) Can you block/suspend all user accounts with over 5 bid retractions in the course of 6 months and all related (same IP, address) accounts? This would help cut down on overbidding to identify someone's top bid, and then backing out.

So, these are a few of my constructive comments for your discussion with your own team and eBay.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

I never realized in 2009-10 that PWCC permitted consignors to have a secret reserve bid, presumably against eBay's Terms of Service. Interesting.

Well, an easy thing for the people who identify shilling in his/any other auctions, is for people to report the listings to eBay and PWCC via the "Report Item" link at the right side under the box and select "Listing Practices", then "Fraudulent Listing Activities," then "Seller is using other accounts to inflate price." If people who care and are being shilled in these auctions would report it every time, eBay will be flooded with Report Item notifications. I am not sure if this would hurt Brent and his business directly; maybe he can chime in again and tell us. If it does, then it may be a solid topic of discussion at the meeting coming up with eBay's employees.

But, once reported, eBay and PWCC can check the auction history since they're being given a pointer to specific instances of presumed shill bidding.

Questions I'm interested in:
1) How often are items for certain sellers not paid for? If that number is over 10% (or on large $$ items), that would be a sign to me that shill accounts are being used and then stiffed, so that the "buyer" doesn't have to fork over cash to buy back their own card. They know you'll relist the card during your next auction.
2) Does your staff actively cross-check buyer addresses with consignor addresses of the same cards? Are they kept in the same line on your spreadsheet/database where they could be easily queried to see if your consigners are winning back their items?
3) If the top bidder does not pay, do you offer to underbidders? If so, this would also spur shill bidding. You could make a policy that you will never make offers to underbidders. Most bidders are wary of receiving "2nd chance" offers, figuring they were bid up in the first place.
4) Can you block/suspend all user accounts with over 5 bid retractions in the course of 6 months and all related (same IP, address) accounts? This would help cut down on overbidding to identify someone's top bid, and then backing out.

So, these are a few of my constructive comments for your discussion with your own team and eBay.

With due respect, ebay doesn't give a damn. I have reported completely obvious shills when there was no possible innocent explanation (to be clear, not on any PWCC auction), and they politely did nothing.

[nolemmings]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

With due respect, ebay doesn't give a damn. I have reported completely obvious shills when there was no possible innocent explanation (to be clear, not on any PWCC auction), and they politely did nothing.

That's because you've never been very persuasive

[Peter_Spaeth]

Brent, when your scans were previously questioned here at a time when in my opinion and many others' opinions they were sometimes bordering on thermonuclear (they are OK now as I have said), why did you come on here and claim that that was the first you had ever heard of your scans being questioned, when in fact you yourself had responded at length to a CU thread about the same topic not too long before? Just wondering? Had you somehow forgotten?

76 and 78 in this thread.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=177348

As for whether you tolerate shill bidding by consignors, only you can know that for sure, but I and several people I know have on many occasions observed bidders with high percentages of bidding activity with you and high numbers of retractions bidding on a wide spectrum of high dollar items in your auctions. You can tell it's the same bidder by the abbreviation and feedback number. It sure looks suspicious even if it isn't.

[clydepepper]

Brent - I have always been very satisfied with my dealings with PWCC. I count you as a dealer I can trust and I certainly don't understand why anyone would say otherwise...unless they have unrealistic expectations...which is probably true.

Thanks again,
Raymond
EBAY user ID: clydepeppper

[wonkaticket]

So you used to allow bidders to bid on their lots, and you used to enhance your scans, but you don't do that anymore. Good to know.

At least you haven't announced finding god to a courtroom, or been charged with any crimes. So as a dealer/AH addressing concerns go your way ahead of the curve...I guess.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by Joshchisox08

Wow didn't know the owner of PWCC was on this site haha. I've got a couple of things from PWCC. Always seem to go a little higher than market value but I've never even had the thought cross my mind of fals scanning or shid billing.

I personally think it's the branding that drives the higher prices. People see PWCC and they trust the name.

+1.

Happy collecting, guys!

Larry

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Brent Huigens

*Does anyone have other ideas that I could forward on to eBay? How can we make eBay the most trusted sale environment on the internet? Please help us make it better and post your thoughts to this thread.


Brent Huigens
PWCC Auctions, LLC
brent@pwccauctions.com

Yes, please get them to be more flexible in removing unwarranted negative feedback. I turned a guy over for non-payment after two weeks of trying to get him to pay for his item, he finally paid shortly after me turning him over and immediately left me a negative feedback...like within a minute of paying. I could not get anyone to listen to how unfair this was to me, they even promised me that a supervisor would call me. No call ever came.

[Jantz]

Originally Posted by Brent Huigens

Dear Fellow Collectors,

Policing Bidders:
On the topic of bid behavior it’s particularly frustrating to be accused of auction manipulation when I actually feel we are working to improve bidder behavior more than anyone else. It's impossible to watch every auction, but we police the bid as much as we can and have blocked more bidder ids for bad behavior than anyone else I know. As our company has matured we have had various policies come and go, some of which have proven more intelligent than others. For example one program I regret most was from 2009/2010 when we allowed consignors to place a single ‘reserve bid’ on a consigned lot if they received approval from us. This sort of thing was more-or-less accepted back in 2009 and we didn't think anything of it at the time (hidden reserves are still part of the hobby with many auction houses). In hindsight this wasn’t a smart program to have engaged in because it opened the door to abuse. We made a mistake offering this as a service and ended it in 2010. We certainly didn’t want to hurt the hobby and we have not offered this option for over 5 years. This is just an example of where we admit to being imperfect and we sincerely hope folks don’t hold this against us. Every business goes through a maturation and we continue to mature alongside the hobby at large.

Brent Huigens
PWCC Auctions, LLC
brent@pwccauctions.com

Brent,

I have a question for you.

Is Ebay aware of the fact that you allowed your consignors to "reserve bid" their own auctions for two years?

Jantz Morey

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by Jantz

Brent,

I have a question for you.

Is Ebay aware of the fact that you allowed your consignors to "reserve bid" their own auctions for two years?

Jantz Morey

It's a "conspiracy theory" and "not in [his] DNA" to commit fraud. Except when he allowed consignors to bid on their own lots which was against ebay rules (and also fraudulent). Or when the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that shill bidding occurs daily in his auctions. And by "overwhelming" I mean that it dwarfs the available circumstantial evidence which made it obvious to me 8 years ago that Mastro was shilling their auctions.

But as Brent told a client of mine the other day when asking him to convince me to lay off him, "what incentive do I have to shill my own auctions?" Gee, who can even think of a single such incentive?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Brent Huigens

Dear Fellow Collectors,

I need to get something off my chest. My general policy is to let the message boards run free, but occasionally I need to make a post where I defend accusations, otherwise some folks may consider our lack of response as sign of guilt.

Do some folks really believe that we manipulate our scans?
Do some believe we orchestrate and/or tolerate shill bidding in our auctions?

For those who know us, or know me personally, it’s clear that these acts of fraud are simply not in my DNA. For those who don’t know me or PWCC and who choose the conspiracy theory approach, I offer logic to refute these claims. The logic is this… we only clear a couple % on each sale, so we simply don’t have the time or resources to manipulate individual auctions. Not to mention that the risk associated with trying to manipulate an auction is immeasurable; it would destroy our brand and everything I’ve worked hard to accomplish.

Our Scans:
Regarding our scanning, all I can say is that we use the same settings for every card we scan in each auction. Never do we go in and adjust the settings for an individual card. If you don’t like our scans, I suppose you can accuse us of having bad scans, but please forgo the accusation that we are manipulating them artificially. We never receive returns from buyers who felt our scans were inaccurate. In fact, I just checked our return history over the last 12 months and there’s not a single instance where the bidder sights the scan as having been enhanced artificially. What does that tell you? I admit that the settings we used in prior years with old equipment was simply were not universally accurate (in my opinion); sometimes making some issues appear ‘hot’ or overly bright. In our defense, it’s hard to make one group of settings that optimize every card issue from 1888-2014. As technology has improved, so have our scanners and we feel that our current images are extremely accurate. If folks are upset with past images, I sincerely apologize and perhaps those folks prefer our current representations more.

Policing Bidders:
On the topic of bid behavior it’s particularly frustrating to be accused of auction manipulation when I actually feel we are working to improve bidder behavior more than anyone else. It's impossible to watch every auction, but we police the bid as much as we can and have blocked more bidder ids for bad behavior than anyone else I know. As our company has matured we have had various policies come and go, some of which have proven more intelligent than others. For example one program I regret most was from 2009/2010 when we allowed consignors to place a single ‘reserve bid’ on a consigned lot if they received approval from us. This sort of thing was more-or-less accepted back in 2009 and we didn't think anything of it at the time (hidden reserves are still part of the hobby with many auction houses). In hindsight this wasn’t a smart program to have engaged in because it opened the door to abuse. We made a mistake offering this as a service and ended it in 2010. We certainly didn’t want to hurt the hobby and we have not offered this option for over 5 years. This is just an example of where we admit to being imperfect and we sincerely hope folks don’t hold this against us. Every business goes through a maturation and we continue to mature alongside the hobby at large.

eBay & the Hobby
It’s important to remember that eBay is a public auction venue, so when dealing with the public, bidding isn’t always squeaky clean. There are a lot of eccentric behavior in the hobby and it’s not fair to accuse every instance of manipulation. In my experience, 8/10 times something that looks fishy is actually legitimate. Obviously bidder behavior on eBay isn’t perfect, but we are absolutely doing all we can to help improve the marketplace. We hope folks can view accusations that PWCC is somehow the source any bad bidder behavior as illogical; we have nothing to gain and everything to lose from such acts.

So what is PWCC doing to help?
Two weeks ago I was at the 2015 West Coast Seller Summit hosted by eBay where I spoke at length with the eBay’s Trust & Safety team regarding bidder behavior and buyer quality. I am also attending a panel discussion on 6/11 with eBay where I will again be pressing for more seller tools that help us filter and police bidding. This panel discussion will be among 200 eBay employees and I’m one of only 4 sellers who’ve been invited to offer their opinions. In particular I am working to get the following tools implemented:

a) Stricter penalties for bid retractors who don’t follow the prescribed rules
b) Much stricter penalties for users with unpaid items on their record
c) IP address monitoring to ensure two or more accounts are never placing bids on the same item
d) Contact information cross checks to ensure bad users are not able to create new accounts
e) Stricter policies on how bidders with prior bad behavior are allowed to return to bidding (.i.e. forced instant payment with vetted credit cards on file, etc)
f) Seller tools that allow us to specify which bidders are allowed to bid (relative to the number and type of infraction listed above).

*Does anyone have other ideas that I could forward on to eBay? How can we make eBay the most trusted sale environment on the internet? Please help us make it better and post your thoughts to this thread.

I again ask that folks be constructive in their comments and I will indeed follow up in a week to review all posts and issue replies where needed. We appreciate everyone’s feedback.

Brent Huigens
PWCC Auctions, LLC
brent@pwccauctions.com

Saving for posterity just so there can be no question as to what John was referring to.

[HerbK]

Imagine ... a thread where a plethora of lawyers all espousing to be the holiest of thou ... !

- Why does California have the most lawyers, and New Jersey, the most toxic waste dumps?

........ New Jersey got first pick!



Hèrb K@nê

[Gradedcardman]

This post does not need to go away yet. I am watching an auction with obvious shill bidding happening. I have notified Brent twice and asked him to have the bidder removed. The current high bidder, according to Brent, won this item 10 days ago and then decided to resell to free up funds. If that is the case then the winner should not now be the high bidder. I will post updates as this moves on and eventually with the winner/bidder information. Ebay will also be notified though I doubt he will face any issues due to his status with them.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Gradedcardman

This post does not need to go away yet. I am watching an auction with obvious shill bidding happening. I have notified Brent twice and asked him to have the bidder removed. The current high bidder, according to Brent, won this item 10 days ago and then decided to resell to free up funds. If that is the case then the winner should not now be the high bidder. I will post updates as this moves on and eventually with the winner/bidder information. Ebay will also be notified though I doubt he will face any issues due to his status with them.

So he told you this in order to reassure you there was NOT shill bidding going on? I don't follow.

[Peter_Spaeth]

By the way, how can a PSA 10 be high end for the grade?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-Fleer-B...item20fd3a2a47

[gregr2]

Reminds me of the line from the movie This is Spinal Tap "These go to eleven".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven

[ullmandds]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

By the way, how can a PSA 10 be high end for the grade?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-Fleer-B...item20fd3a2a47

the power of puffery!

[calvindog]

Nothing to see here, folks, keep it moving.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d..._None_ViewLink

[scooter729]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

By the way, how can a PSA 10 be high end for the grade?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-Fleer-B...item20fd3a2a47

Very simple: the description says it's worthy of an 11, so that's why it's high end. Duh.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by scooter729

Very simple: the description says it's worthy of an 11, so that's why it's high end. Duh.

LOL. Not that I thought much of the independent PWCC certification anyhow, but attaching it to a 10 burns all credibility. Stupid.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Gradedcardman

This post does not need to go away yet. I am watching an auction with obvious shill bidding happening. I have notified Brent twice and asked him to have the bidder removed. The current high bidder, according to Brent, won this item 10 days ago and then decided to resell to free up funds. If that is the case then the winner should not now be the high bidder. I will post updates as this moves on and eventually with the winner/bidder information. Ebay will also be notified though I doubt he will face any issues due to his status with them.

Can you post a link to the item in question, or the item number.

[Brian Van Horn]

I hate to pile on, but the Standard Biscuit fiasco in February is still a relevant topic. The cards were faked and still passed through SGC and were then auctioned through PWCC.

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Brian Van Horn

I hate to pile on, but the Standard Biscuit fiasco in February is still a relevant topic. The cards were faked and still passed through SGC and were then auctioned through PWCC.

...but SGC graded them, so they MUST be legit.

[wonkaticket]

Adam are you sure? I was told this isn't in his DNA?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Brian Van Horn

I hate to pile on, but the Standard Biscuit fiasco in February is still a relevant topic. The cards were faked and still passed through SGC and were then auctioned through PWCC.

I don't think we can blame PWCC for accepting SGC graded cards on consignment, unless the consignor was inherently suspicious, but you do raise the very important question of who was able to get these through SGC and how.

For reference:
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=201147

[Exhibitman]

I agree with Peter re the counterfeit cards in SGC holders; no one should expect an auctioneer or consignment seller to second-guess the TPGs.

As for the shilling and fraud admission, first thought I had about the OP was "how stupid was that?" Had a client of mine wanted to make a similar post I'd have told him to STFU because he will win over no one who wasn't already OK with his business and he might step in the doo-doo by accident, as happened here. What leads someone to think they can BS around stuff like that I will never understand. Nixonian hubris? brain lesions? Alien mind control beams?

An interesting thing that got short shrift here is the 2nd PWCC post discussing the inside game with eBay reps. I thought that was fascinating, esp. how eBay might actually change the feedback system to something more transparent, as it used to be. 90% of the shilling crap would end if the system still allowed for the outing and tracking of shill bidders. A return to that standard would be nice and I hope it happens. Or should I just go ahead and cancel that ice skating lesson in Hell?

Frankly, I love the idea of tracked consignor ID's right in the listing. Easily done, and easily checked.

Despite all of the negatives, personally, I have no issue with anyone who chooses to bid with PWCC or Probstein. We're all card sluts to one extent or another. I've danced with those devils more than once, but always eyes wide open and aware of the pitfalls of wading into the cesspool. Anyone who doesn't know what these middlemen are about and act accordingly at this point is akin to someone taking up smoking: it says right on the damned box the stuff is bad for you, so ignore the warnings at your own peril.

Time to move on to other dead horses to beat?

[Gradedcardman]

I want to update my last post to say that PWCC has retracted/removed the possible shill bids. I will follow this auction through to the end and give a final update on Sunday.

[ullmandds]

well I certainly understand that is is nearly impossible to "police" thousands of auctions...and if what it takes is someone pointing it out to brent in order for him to do something about it...that's better than nothing...and is certainly a start in the right direction.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

well I certainly understand that is is nearly impossible to "police" thousands of auctions...and if what it takes is someone pointing it out to brent in order for him to do something about it...that's better than nothing...and is certainly a start in the right direction.

Is it impossible to police, say, the auctions of your 25 most expensive cards? That argument that it's harder to run an ebay auction house than a major corporation is bullshit. I can look at 25 auctions in about 10 minutes and identify repeat bidders bidding on all sorts of diverse cards with high percentages of bids in PWCC and lots of retractions.

[ullmandds]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Is it impossible to police, say, the auctions of your 25 most expensive cards? That argument that it's harder to run an ebay auction house than a major corporation is bullshit. I can look at 25 auctions and identify repeat bidders bidding on all sorts of diverse cards with high percentage of bids in PWCC and lots of retractions.

No...it is more than reasonable to police that #.

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

well I certainly understand that is is nearly impossible to "police" thousands of auctions...and if what it takes is someone pointing it out to brent in order for him to do something about it...that's better than nothing...and is certainly a start in the right direction.

The idea that he's an innocent dupe being used by crooked consigners is belied by his admitted (and documented) fraud. Brent knows exactly what he's doing.

[Rob D.]

This is a hobby in which loyalty is pledged -- much too often and by people who should know better -- to whomever bought them dinner at a National. If Brent does nothing else, he should just make sure he has reservations at Morton's the last week in July.

R0b D3wolf

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Rob D.

This is a hobby in which loyalty is pledged -- much too often and by people who should know better -- to whomever bought them dinner at a National. If Brent does nothing else, he should just make sure he has reservations at Morton's the last week in July.

R0b D3wolf

Seems all you have to do to win most people over is ship their card quickly and securely.

[chaddurbin]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Seems all you have to do to win most people over is ship their card quickly and securely.

i'm happy with the free catalog that i didn't have to provide two hobby references for.

[Brent Huigens]

Fellow collectors,

Thank you for your responses to this thread and for providing suggestions for both improving eBay and for improving PWCC Auctions. I have separated our responses into two sections. The first provides my responses to your feedback about improving PWCC Auctions. The second provides my approach to incorporating your feedback in my conversations with eBay later this week.

I have said before that I try to limit my involvement in message boards in order to ensure an open, uninfluenced discussion. As such, I don’t plan to revisit this thread. If you have follow up questions or feedback, please send to me by email (brent@pwccauctions.com).

Thank you,

Brent Huigens
PWCC Auctions
brent@pwccauctions.com


Section 1: Feedback to improve PWCC Auctions:

Concerns over consignor-issued reserves in 2009-10

Raised by swarmee, wonkaticket, calvindog, Jantz, ullmandds

This was first discussed several years ago on this and the Net54 message boards. The reserve option was a highly restrictive service we offered over a narrow period of time, ending in 2010. It was used by very few consignors because our requirements were strict:

1. Consignors had to get PWCC approval to place reserve bids in advance
2. The reserve amount had to be conservative relative to the market value (also required approval)
3. The consignor still had to pay our fees, as well as eBay, in the event that the reserve was not met.

I estimate that no more than 100 (perhaps has few as 50) reserves were ever placed in 2009-10 and the vast majority were eclipsed by the bidding. Not making excuses for this program because we regret having it, but it was never used to wrong bidders, eBay, or the hobby.

Concerns over the cost of shipping, our approach to packaging, and recommendations to use FedEx rather than USPS

Raised by begsu1013

In order to keep shipping costs low, we use a packaging approach which includes multiple layers of envelopes. This includes a bubble mailer and a rigid outer envelope. This approach was developed over a decade of optimizing our shipping. We feel this approach results in not only an appropriate cost but also is very effective in protecting cards. Complaints of damage in shipping are extraordinarily rare.

We ship USPS because they offer the lowest rates. Generally speaking, most buyers prefer low cost over speed. We offer shipping through FedEx if buyers request it. Items over $3k are shipped USPS registered due to its unmatched safety and security.

Suggestions that we stop selling Christmas Rack Packs in our Auctions due to concerns over their legitimacy

Raised by Bbeck

We have discussed this internally and ultimately agree with the feedback from this and other boards. As such, we will no longer broker Christmas Rack Packs in our auctions, starting with Auction #6. Out of respect for our consignors who have already submitted these items to our current auction, we will sell the items we have already in house.

Concerns about bid manipulation (shilling)

Raised by Peter_Spaeth, Swarmee, Calvindog

9 times out of 10, bidding behavior that appears suspicious is actually legitimate, and just the result of eccentric bid behavior by trusted and proven users. However, we acknowledge there is still room for improvement which was the reason I started this thread; please refer to the next section of this post which summarizes the recommendations I intend to make to eBay to increase transparency in bidding and seller’s ability to limit bids from eBay users with prior bad behavior.

I encourage folks to contact me regarding any auction which they feel shows signs of suspicious behavior at brent@pwccauctions.com. I will always investigate and respond to these inquires. We very much appreciate everyone’s time in helping us police the market place.

Questions about the settings we use in our scanning process

Raised by Sean1125, Bbcemporium, Peter_Spaeth

Our goal with scanning is to make the card appear as close to its actual appearance as possible. We are not trying to enhance the appearance of the cards – this would not be in our best interest because we would end up with unhappy buyers, returned items, and a damaged brand.

We use an image size of 150 dpi because we feel this size is most representative of how the card looks when you are actually holding it in your hand. In special circumstances (high value, unique issues, etc.) we can and do provide higher resolution scans upon request.

Suggestion to list who consigned each item

Raised by glchen, Swarmee

This would deviate from the basic principles of a consignment-based business, though we understand the logic behind the suggestion.

Suggestion to ask the collecting community to police our auctions for bid manipulation and inauthentic items

Raised by Glchen

Yes! I often ask the hobby community to help us police our auctions, and welcome anyone who identifies perceived impropriety to bring it to our attention by email (brent@pwccauctions.com). In fact, a recent post on the Blowout Cards message board alerted us to an inauthentic item we had listed in Auction #5 yesterday. Based in part from the feedback from this message board, we ended the auction.

Suggestion to develop our own auction platform for PWCC and detach from eBay

Raised by irishdenny, swarmee

eBay is the largest market in the world. It is not broken, but we agree with many of the contributors to this post that there is room for improvement. We want to focus on improving an already highly functional venue rather than starting from scratch on our own platform. That said, should eBay make policy changes that we all feel undermine the needs of the hobby, we will absolutely make the move towards independence.

Question about whether we ever offered to waive sales tax for California auction winners if they paid by check?

Raised by calvindog

Yes, we offered this option to CA buyers in 2013/2014 until our move to Oregon at the start of this year. The State of CA was always paid the sales tax they were owed for all items shipped to CA buyers. This program was very expensive at times for us, but in 2013 our plans to relocate to Oregon were already in place, so we knew the program would be temporary. Bottom line, CA is a large market and we wanted CA based bidders involved in our auctions.

Because of our volume, we were audited by the CA Board of Equalization who reviewed all our transactions to CA buyers since 2009. It was concluded that we were in full compliance.


Section 2: Feedback to improve the service provided by eBay:

Suggestions to restore bidder usernames in bid history and enabling sellers to restrict bidding for things like unpaid items, bid retractions, and low feedback

Raised by swarmee, glchen

We agree about restoring bid history and usernames. It makes it difficult to ask the community to police bidding when usernames are truncated. In our opinion, more important than providing bidder IDs is providing a Bidder Defect Report, summarizing things like number of bid retractions, number of unpaid items, etc.

If such a report is created, eBay should also put in place the ability for sellers to enable or disable bidders based on certain metrics in the Bidder Defect Report. For example, sellers could then prohibit bidders who have a certain number of bid retractions, prohibit bidders who have a certain number of unpaid items, restrict buyers who have low feedback from bidding on all items or on selected items.

Right now, eBay does not have the functionality to allow sellers to do these things. This is one of my main suggestions to eBay.

Comments about seller’s ability to address negative feedback

Raised by Slidekellyslide

We agree that the feedback system needs revision, and the good news is that eBay agrees wholeheartedly. We will all soon see improvements to how feedback is treated. Generally speaking it is the belief of eBay that feedback should play a smaller role in marketplace.

Suggestion that eBay consider offering extended auction durations to enable more potential bidders to see items

Raised by glchen

We agree that the short durations can be a limitation. To address these concerns, eBay recently enabled 10-day duration auctions for free. It’s possible that they would consider longer auction durations in the future, but ultimately the need for long durations is a Catalog Auction invention, needed because auctions on those platforms are infrequent and bidders need time to find the items. Ebay has items closing 24 hours a day so the need for long auctions is less pronounced in our opinion.

Suggestion that eBay consider limiting the number of bids placed on an item by an individual bidder

Raised by tombocombo, DerekMichael

This is an interesting suggestion and worth discussing. In our experience, 9 times out of 10, mass bidding is not a sign of manipulation, but rather a symptom of competitive and often eccentric good bidders. So while mass bidding on a single item is certainly annoying, it’s rarely a sign of fraud.

Regardless, we agree this is a good suggestion and there may be some limits eBay could consider. We will bring it up.

Answers to specific questions raised by Swarmee

Raised by swarmee

1. How often are items for certain sellers not paid for? If that number is over 10% (or on large $$ items), that would be a sign to me that shill accounts are being used and then stiffed, so that the “buyer” doesn’t have to fork over cash to buy back their own card. They know you’ll relist the card during your next auction.

Great question, and a great metric to track. We do track this particularly for new consignors. In our opinion, a threshold of 10% is actually far too high. Returns and unpaid items are very rare. From an entire monthly auction, we only have about 1% of items go unpaid. For us, if a single consignor has more than 2 unpaid items, we research the buyers and bid history in search of suspicious behavior.

2. Does your staff actively cross-check buyer addresses with consignor addresses of the same cards? Are they kept in the same line on your spreadsheet/database where they could be easily queried to see if your consigners are winning back their items?

Yes, we absolutely cross-check buyer addresses with consignor addresses for all items. This is an easy check for us with the tools we use.

3. If the top bidder does not pay, do you offer to underbidders? If so, this would also spur shill bidding. You could make a policy that you will never make offers to underbidders. Most bidders are wary of receiving “2nd chance” offers, figuring they were bid up in the first place.

No, we don’t offer items to underbidders because the second-chance offer process is highly inefficient and rarely honored by underbidders (partly for reasons you highlight). Important to note that these items are then relisted in the next auction. All bidders who fail to pay for an item in our auctions are blocked from bidding on our account.

4. Can you block/suspend all user accounts with over 5 bid retractions in the course of 6 months and all related (same IP, address) accounts? This would help cut down on overbidding to identify someone’s top bid, and then backing out.

We will be asking eBay to formulate a Bidder Defect Report (see description above) and ask them to start policing IP addresses to identify suspicious bid behavior. Bid retractions can be both legal and illegal, and it’s the illegal type which don’t follow eBay guidelines that we’d like to see treated more harshly.