Article about Collecting and Fraud in the Hobby

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Snowman

This has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, but for the sake of continuity in this thread, I will attempt to restate the Cliff Notes, as there have been multiple reasons stated for why eBay might have sent out that letter, several of which have garnered significant support among those paying attention.

The most common arguments are, in no particular order:

A) "Yay! ebay is finally cracking down on shill bidding! And Probstein is next!"... any day now, any day now...
B) The FBI came knocking on their door, asking for any and all records pertaining to PWCC as a result of the card trimming scandal/investigation.
C) eBay execs were pissed off when they learned that after many years of building their brand off of eBay's back, PWCC, their largest seller of sports cards, would be launching their own platform and stealing business from them (a fairly reasonable viewpoint for eBay to have, if you ask me). Thus, they wrote this very public letter and sent it to all of PWCC's customers in an effort to tarnish their reputation a mere few weeks before the launch of PWCC's new platform. Or what some might refer to as the, "you can't quit, you're fired!" approach.

Personally, while I acknowledge that option A is plausible, I see it as highly unlikely given their history of allowing shill bidding to permeate their entire platform prior to cutting off PWCC, and their otherwise continued lack of interest on this front since then. I think that some combination of B) and C) is what led to their decision to cut ties with PWCC, and that they intentionally scripted a very vague letter about "individuals associated with PWCC" that they hoped would damage PWCC's reputation. The timing of when this letter was sent out with respect to the launch of PWCC's new platform should not be lost on anyone. This was not a coincidence.

We are all free to call it how we see it, but this is how I see it, and I'm very much not alone. In fact, I believe my opinion is, by far, the majority opinion in this hobby.

I should let the lawyers on the board speak to this but if eBay was at all attempting to damage PWCC's reputation because they were pissed off learning that PWCC would languish...I mean move...to their own platform, Brent should have and could have sued. eBay has already forgotten that PWCC was a leader in selling sports cards on their site. Does not impact their bottom line in any meaningful way.