ebay finds that PWCC engaged in shill bidding?

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by LACardsGuy

What is truly amazing to me (and please ignore if someone already pointed this out) is that a search for PWCC shows TONS of sellers using "PWCC-E" and the like in their titles. I can't believe they are getting away with that.

If the slabs have the PWCC-E sticker on the back, then that's pretty standard practice. Same with the MBA gold stickers. People usually mention those in the title. If they don't have the sticker though, then ya, that's false advertising obviously.

[LACardsGuy]

I think I mis-understood what they were doing. If it's just that they bought cards with those stickers, no big thing. I thought they were using PWCC in title as click bait.

Originally Posted by Snowman

If the slabs have the PWCC-E sticker on the back, then that's pretty standard practice. Same with the MBA gold stickers. People usually mention those in the title. If they don't have the sticker though, then ya, that's false advertising obviously.

[Johnny630]

In that video the Pwcc guy said we get 5-10% higher sales because of scans, packing, and shipping methods.

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

In that video the Pwcc guy said we get 5-10% higher sales because of scans, packing, and shipping methods.

Uh huh....yea right.....I am a small time seller and I do all three of those equally, if not better than, PWCC.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

In that video the Pwcc guy said we get 5-10% higher sales because of scans, packing, and shipping methods.

There are many reasons why a company like PWCC would produce higher sales prices than other sellers. This stuff isn't rocket science.

I would probably rank order the reasons for higher sale prices as follows, with #1, without question, being the primary factor that would explain the majority of the differences we see in sales prices vs the rest of the market.

1. #1 - The number of followers that they had far exceeds that of nearly every other eBay seller in this market. The more eyes you have on your auctions, the more they will sell for. This should be obvious to everyone.

1. #2 - They have better images of their cards than every single other seller, full stop. Nobody else offers high-definition scans that allow you to zoom in on a card at 20x magnification enabling you to see the individual paper fibers on a card. You can see exactly what you're bidding on. With so many other sellers, you often can't see a card's flaws. Blurry images, low-def scans, front-only scans, etc. It allows them to sell a card at it's maximum value because they eliminate so much of the guesswork. It's about as close as you can get to holding a card in your hands when purchasing online. Most other sellers will get less for their items simply because there is more uncertainty in the card's condition, even if it's slabbed.

1. #3 - They offer multiple creative ways to pay for items. Not just PayPal or Credit Card. I've paid for high-dollar cards with them using personal checks and even Bitcoin. They even accept trade value if you have cards sitting in your vault with them. They also offer loans that leverage cards in your vault as collateral. These might seem like small benefits to some people, but it is a huge perk for many buyers in the high-end market.

1. #4 - Their auctions are always well organized. All the 1950s Topps card listings end around the same time. Same with vintage Hockey, or 1980s basketball. So if you're interested in a particular segment of the market, you see not only the cards you're looking for, but you also get exposure to numerous other listings that you might not have even otherwise thought to look for if you are watching their auctions. Again, this leads to more eyes on their listings, and more eyes equal more money.

1. #5 - Shill bidding. Certainly, some of their consignors shill bid in their auctions. This is true for all sellers on eBay though. We can argue about how much of an effect this has and how widespread it is, but it likely has a small but measurable effect. Every consignment company is subject to these same issues, as is every dishonest individual seller on eBay who shills their own auctions. And even random listings get shill bid on by people who have copies of that same card who are just trying to bump its value. This is an eBay problem to solve though, not the consignment companies'.

[prestigecollectibles]

Just saw this on Twitter

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by prestigecollectibles

Just saw this on Twitter

And he STILL can't produce a back scan!

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by bobbyw8469

And he STILL can't produce a back scan!

Perhaps now he'll think he has enough business to omit the front scan too?

"1986 Fleer Michael Jordan PSA 8"

"This is a stock image. You will receive a similar card to the one pictured in this listing."

[samosa4u]

PWCC needs to do the following:

a) When the Vault Marketplace opens up next month, try to make sure that prices closely reflect today's market. In other words, stop listing them at '2020 prices,' cause' that just isn't going to work now.

b) I will NOT pay a hundred US shipping for a hundred-dollar card! Seriously, WTF! And I'm not paying three-hundred US shipping for a thousand dollar card. They're obviously making profit from shipping and this needs to stop. I've bought all sorts of stuff from Americans over the past twenty years and I know just exactly how much it costs.

c) Limit the amount of times someone can bid on a single auction. Anyone bidding ten or fifteen times on the same item should be given the boot. I don't care if the bids are legit and this guy has a hundred-grand in his bank account - no more games.

d) Stop doing business with known card doctors. I don't know what kind of relationship Moser has or had with Brent, but PWCC needs to distance themselves from guys like him.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

PWCC needs to do the following:

c) Limit the amount of times someone can bid on a single auction. Anyone bidding ten or fifteen times on the same item should be given the boot. I don't care if the bids are legit and this guy has a hundred-grand in his bank account - no more games.

Am I reading you correctly and you actually think legit bidders should be booted for bidding so many times in an auction?!?!? So let me get this straight, if there are two bidders going back and forth on an auction and one of them finally makes say their 10th bid, you are for them not being able to bid anymore? And if the other person can still make one more bid they'll win the item by default because the 1st bidder is stopped from bidding again, the consignor gets less than the item would/should have sold for, and the AH loses out on getting more commission.........do I have that all right? I just want to make sure I didn't misread what you just wrote.

[samosa4u]

Originally Posted by BobC

Am I reading you correctly and you actually think legit bidders should be booted for bidding so many times in an auction?!?!? So let me get this straight, if there are two bidders going back and forth on an auction and one of them finally makes say their 10th bid, you are for them not being able to bid anymore? And if the other person can still make one more bid they'll win the item by default because the 1st bidder is stopped from bidding again, the consignor gets less than the item would/should have sold for, and the AH loses out on getting more commission.........do I have that all right? I just want to make sure I didn't misread what you just wrote.

Bob,

Yes, you read right.

We're all grown men here - not schoolchildren. Why do we need to bid ten times or more?

Hmmm, let's see ... 350 ... 400 ... hehehe ... 425 ... 450 ... oh dear ... 475 ... 499 ... 501 ... hohoho ...

A person bidding like that is either a) not serious about the item or b) shilling it up! Limiting the number of times an individual can bid on a particular item is a great idea and all the major auction houses should consider it!

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

We're all grown men here - not schoolchildren. Why do we need to bid ten times or more?

No disrespect intended but you've got to be kidding. Over the years I have many times bid more than ten times on a particular lot, and in each instance I was hoping my last bid would be my final bid and I would win the item. In some instances I simply do not know how high I am prepared to bid unless faced with the reality of knowing that unless I place another bid, I will not win the item. It is all well and good to say that one should know beforehand how high one will bid. But we are human and there are times we will exceed our preconceived limit once the stark reality of being outbid hits home.

In other instances, I might not feel comfortable leaving max bids. Trust in an AH's bidding integrity is something earned over time, and unless and until I have developed that trust I do not leave max bids.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

Bob,

Yes, you read right.

We're all grown men here - not schoolchildren. Why do we need to bid ten times or more?

Hmmm, let's see ... 350 ... 400 ... hehehe ... 425 ... 450 ... oh dear ... 475 ... 499 ... 501 ... hohoho ...

A person bidding like that is either a) not serious about the item or b) shilling it up! Limiting the number of times an individual can bid on a particular item is a great idea and all the major auction houses should consider it!

What harm does it cause though to bid like that though? Regardless of whether the item sells for $501 or $5,001 in this case, I don't see what harm this causes. And I don't see how it prevents shill bidding either. If you tell a shill bidder that they can only bid 10 times, do you honestly think this will discourage them from doing so? "Ah shucks, I only get 10 bids? Dammit! I was planning to shill my item up. Well, there goes that idea!" I would argue that if this is a $5,000 item then bids of "350 ... 400 ... 425 ... 450 ... 475 ... 499 ... 501 ..." are probably not shill bids, and if the item is worth around $500 then there's nothing fishy about someone incrementally bidding up to that amount. There are many different ways to detect and prevent shill bidding from a data perspective. But I don't see how this is one of them.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

Bob,

Yes, you read right.

We're all grown men here - not schoolchildren. Why do we need to bid ten times or more?

Hmmm, let's see ... 350 ... 400 ... hehehe ... 425 ... 450 ... oh dear ... 475 ... 499 ... 501 ... hohoho ...

A person bidding like that is either a) not serious about the item or b) shilling it up! Limiting the number of times an individual can bid on a particular item is a great idea and all the major auction houses should consider it!

Many times, in extended bidding when I'm going against another bidder, that is exactly how it goes. I remember one time in particular, after we'd leap frogged each other a few times, I decided to discourage him by placing a hard bid that was several increments above his current bid. I won the item with that bid, and since then I've wondered if, in doing so, I bid much more than would've been necessary.

[Peter_Spaeth]

It's hard to legislate honesty.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

Bob,

Yes, you read right.

We're all grown men here - not schoolchildren. Why do we need to bid ten times or more?

Hmmm, let's see ... 350 ... 400 ... hehehe ... 425 ... 450 ... oh dear ... 475 ... 499 ... 501 ... hohoho ...

A person bidding like that is either a) not serious about the item or b) shilling it up! Limiting the number of times an individual can bid on a particular item is a great idea and all the major auction houses should consider it!

Okay, that is an interesting opinion, and I don't think you'll ever see it happening. No self-respecting AH would ever institute such a practice as the first thing I can see consignors doing is taking their items elsewhere from then on. How someone chooses to legitimately bid in an auction is their own business, and I can't understand how your thinking will be of much help. I assume your concern is with shill bidding, if not, I'm really curous to know what it really is.

I saw one other person already responded to your post stating they have at times made multiple bids on auctions, and for exactly the same reason I'm assuming you are concerned with, shill bidding. So are people that do that type of bidding so they don't get stuck leaving a secret max bid out there for some shill bidder to run up wrong? And if so, please tell me exactly what they are supposed to do then. Since auction houses have things like extended bidding, you normally can't just set a snipe bid and forget about it. And the way a lot of these extended bidding periods are set up, they continue on till only one person is still standing. I have gotten into a back and forth in extended bidding periods myself, and at times have only wanted to go one increment at a time so as to hopefully outlast the other bidder without going higher than I have to. During such times things can change also if another lot suddenly went out of reach so I now have more to spend on a lot than originally planned. Or I end up winning a lot I didn't expect to, and so have less money than I anticipated to have and am thus thankful I just didn't put in a secret max bid on the lot I was going bid increment by bid increment on. And the same circumstances can happen with the person you are bidding against, which may suddenly cause them to drop out of a back and forth bidding war and allow you to get something for less than you would have had to pay otherwise.

So you stated what you don't approve of, numerous multiple bids, which I assume is an issue to you in combating shilling. So if that isn't okay, please explain to me how limiting the number of times a person can bid on a particular AH item will actually stop shill bidding. If the number of times someone could bid on an auction item were limited, I would assume someone shilling an auction would simply run the bidding up to where they wanted in fewer bids going forward. So you haven't really stopped the shilling, but you've now succeeded in limiting legit bidders to how often they can bid, potentially costing consignors and AHs money as I said earlier.

And if it turns out you aren't really concerned about shill bidding at all, do you really just dislike the way some legit people bid? If so, would really like to hear from someone who owns/works for an AH to get their perspective on limiting how many times someone can legitimately bid on an auction lot.

And calling people schoolchildren because you personally don't like their legit auction bidding habits is a bit harsh, don't you think?

[packs]

I always thought there was a psychological angle to bidding 20 times just to slightly increase your max bid. I always thought it was a tactic people used to try to scare others off by making them think the lot has a a lot of competition.

[Bram99]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

Bob,

Yes, you read right.

We're all grown men here - not schoolchildren. Why do we need to bid ten times or more?

Hmmm, let's see ... 350 ... 400 ... hehehe ... 425 ... 450 ... oh dear ... 475 ... 499 ... 501 ... hohoho ...

A person bidding like that is either a) not serious about the item or b) shilling it up! Limiting the number of times an individual can bid on a particular item is a great idea and all the major auction houses should consider it!

I totally disagree with this. Also, different auctioneers have different bidding rules and formats and call for different strategies. I bid multiple times on cards I really want and am really serious about all the time. In most auctions, I am worried about shill bidding and other shenanigans so I don't like to place my max bid until late.

In other instances or auctions formats, it behoves the bidder to put in a floor bid that is significantly higher than the next required step up in bidding to rule out a lot of non-serious buyers from being involved in the "extended bidding" period or whatever the auction house calls it.

The proposal you are talking about requires a lock-tight system where everyone is on the up and up - all other bidders, the auction house - everyone. That's not what we are faced with at all.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Bram99

I totally disagree with this. Also, different auctioneers have different bidding rules and formats and call for different strategies. I bid multiple times on cards I really want and am really serious about all the time. In most auctions, I am worried about shill bidding and other shenanigans so I don't like to place my max bid until late.

In other instances or auctions formats, it behoves the bidder to put in a floor bid that is significantly higher than the next required step up in bidding to rule out a lot of non-serious buyers from being involved in the "extended bidding" period or whatever the auction house calls it.

The proposal you are talking about requires a lock-tight system where everyone is on the up and up - all other bidders, the auction house - everyone. That's not what we are faced with at all.

+1. There is an entire psychology of and strategy to bidding in an auction and a lot of it is dependent on the rule structure of the auction. An auction with a fixed close time, no BP, and a very minimal increase for each bid (eBay) calls for an entirely different approach than one with prior bidding on an item to qualify for overtime, bid increments measured as a percentage of the last bid, and 20% BP, or one with fixed bid increments, a 'jungle' OT rule that lets you bid on anything, and a BP.