New and Shiny - Market Manipulation

[BobC]

Originally Posted by BobbyVCP

There are lots of fake sales that they use to try and set a crazy value...These do not sell and they do not bother getting a refund for eBay fees. Then usually a day after they relist again using the exact same image...

We are in the process of showing these off at VCP so you can learn these sellers tactics and bid accordingly....

Good for you Bobby. I hope you are at least somewhat successful in ferreting out those occasions where this type of manipulation is being done, and can correct/adjust VCP records accordingly. Can't be easy though.

I remember just this past year coming across an obvious manipulation scheme where over the course of a month or so, people kept putting up 2002 Topps 206 Honus Wagner game used bat cards on Ebay. They rarely came up at all, and then suddenly there are 5 or 6 up for sale and selling over the course of a month or so, for prices from about $2K to $6K. A lot of the people, sellers and bidders, in these auctions were the same players. Even though Ebay hides the buyer's names/IDs, it is pretty easy to tell they are the same people by looking at the positive feedback counts given for each bidder/buyer. The one thing that stuck out to me was how when I kept looking back at the various sellers, none of them ever got any positive feedback for selling even one of these Wagner relic cards. Not a one!

The sales of these dropped off the map since then, with what looks like only one recent, legitimate sale of one of these Wagner relic cards via Ebay auction for $898.88 back on 10/26/2022. And in checking the seller's feedback, they did get a positive feedback report and listing from the buyer subsequent to the sale of that card, to help prove the sale's legitimacy. That $898.88 price is a whole lot different, and much more realistic, than the $2K - $6K prices a small batch of the exact same card was supposedly selling for just several months earlier. And usually there is at least one of these 2002 Topps 206 Wagner relic cards you can always find listed on Ebay for sale, but typically at a BIN in at least the $3K-$4K range. That prior year mini surge in sales of these Wagner relic cards on Ebay sure looked to be exactly the kind of market manipulation being discussed. I'm assuming that Ebay sales like those get picked up and then posted on some sites/platforms, like VCP, which others then use to determine current market value, correct? In this recent past case/instance though, it looks like the market manipulation ploy didn't work and others didn't suddenly start overpaying for that particular Wagner relic card.

I myself do not use or follow any of these market research tools, so am not 100% sure how they exactly work and specifically what information and sources they do draw their input from to use. Based on my own experience and what I've seen though, you kind of have to take everything you see nowadays from any outside sources with at least a small grain of salt, and use a lot of your own common sense and experience in deciding what a certain card/item is worth to you, and therefore what you're willing to pay/bid for it.

I've never heard anything but great statements and feedback regarding Bobby's VCP site, even though I don't use it myself. Anything you can do to help police this kind of market manipulation crap would be a huge boon to people in the hobby. Good luck and best wishes to you in your efforts going forward.