The "auction" (for lack of a better word) is over. Look at what happened.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Scott,

Actually, I do avoid auctions that I think are crooked. However I make this assessment on an auction by auction basis; I do not personally subscribe to the belief that the big ebay consignment sellers like Brent are doing the shilling. I think the owners of the cards are doing the shilling. That's my opinion alone. Now what the sellers can do to combat it, and whether or not they are doing enough, that's a whole different discussion.

To me, it is not a different discussion - whether the seller is shilling, or he is just permitting his consignors to do it, it has the same result. Just as the seller can decide not to shill, the seller can also decide that he won't allow his consignors to shill, and there are plenty of ways to accomplish that. There has been plenty of evidence in similar threads to this, to support the claim that sellers are aware of shilling and are not doing enough, and also that it would be fairly simple for them to locate consignors who are shilling, and get rid of them. But that would bust their business model.

Originally Posted by MattyC

I can think shilling is criminal activity, call it out and avoid it when I see it-- and at the same time I can refuse to lose sleep over it, refuse to obsess over it, and refuse to scour the bidding activity of every auction like some hypothetical power nerd.

I agree with all of the above and it's exactly how I handle my own bidding. I read your previous statements to mean that you felt you had to either check the history of all ebay sellers, which was too much trouble, or just bid on any seller's items if it was stuff you wanted, even if you knew the seller was crooked. Quite frankly, I don't check the history of ANY ebay sellers - I would have no idea that large ebay sellers were shilling (or permitting shilling) if I didn't read about it here in this forum. As a result, I've avoided those sellers. So this forum has some good results when it comes to 'fighting crime'.