Does 100% bid activity w/one seller mean shilling?

[travrosty]

Originally Posted by Edwolf1963

I've seen a number of threads talk about shilling and reasons to believe so. I know one possible "give-away" on eBay is unusually high bid activity with one seller. My question is, could there be another explanation for that..? Or does that alone raise more than just a suspicion flag..?

I was looking at some common T206's last week and noticed one seller had some pretty aggressive bids well before auction-end. Clicking on a few of his cards to see the bid activity, I noticed many had the same bidder bidding up aggressively and/or trumping other bids. This one had a fairly low feedback number - I clicked on his bid activity w/that seller and it was 100%! I looked closer to see if I could line-up that bidder feedback number with recent feedback left for, or by this seller. I did find it, seemed that the feedback was especially glowing for this person (perhaps no doubt if he's over-paying :-)

With suspicions up, I let it go and didn't bid or up my snipes on anything else. Now, this morning, I noticed same - same seller, several cards up for sale, high bids in already and by that same bidder - still at 100% w/this seller.

I don't want to make unfounded accusations of anyone, but can't figure this one out. Would hate to point a finger and find out I'm wrong or there's an easy explanation? Could there be another explanation..? Is it logical that one buyer is so enamored with this seller that he only bids/buys from him and at top-end market prices?

Hard to think of another explanation. There might be one and others can chime in.

if one buyer bids so much from one seller, you would think he could contact that person outside of ebay and arrange more of a bulk buy with the seller and negotiate a discount deal for buying so many things. that is what has happened to me. someone buys something, notices i have a few things they want, then emails me and gives me their list and we work out a big deal, not just continously buying onesy-twosy off of ebay from me for a year or so. that doesnt make sense.

i noticed a seller of autographs once who had another ebay member continously bidding on every single auction the guy ever put up, with most of the bids ending at about the 75% mark of the final bid. it was enough to pump up the price and keep the action going, but never enough to actually win the item. he won the item only a couple of times, and 'surprise', the item never changed hands and just went back up for a relist by the same seller.

He said the guy never paid and so he relisted it, but he still lets the guy bid on every auction and doesnt ban the guy? the guy was bidding on every autograph he was selling, no matter if it was sports, presidential, entertainment, every 5 dollar autograph, every 500 dollar autograph.

what a scam. i confronted the seller who denied it of course said he didnt know the bidder even though the feedback said otherwise. yeah, right!

it's a shame it happens and hopefully ebay keeps an eye out for patterns like that, but they might not do anything about it unless they are alerted to it.