Shill Bidding

[botn]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

So why should this hobby be immune? I'm in no way advocating this in any way. I think the key is the "reserve." And the problem is that most of the time the reserve is only known to the actually consigner and sometimes the auctioneer...but not revealed to the public.

And the purpose is obviously to encourage spirited bidding. And how boring would an auction be if every card had a published reserve around the retail value.

Using a reserve ends up being great for the consignor but as you point out takes on the flavor of more of an asking price which is not in the spirit of an auction where buyers want to feel they set the prices on their own. I tend to think bids protecting the consignment happen more often than we know.

I recently won a card from PWCC...and there was what appeared to me to be very suspicious...likely shill bidding. I questioned brent and he agreed the bidding was unusual...but he had seen this type of very small incremental bidding to reveal the winning bid before.

And...he said that he knew for sure the next highest bid was legitimate...sooooo. While I appreciated his time and thought I still was a little buggered thinking as we all do...I could have likely gotten the card cheaper.

From what I understand as well as my memory of Brent's posts on forums, bidding and bidders have always been legit even if they seem odd. Maybe they are sometimes but he cannot possibly know in your case if a friend of the consignor was placing those small bid increments so to write it off as such is simply his sweeping it under the table.