wanna see some blatant shilling?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=8715119326

May not be baseball, but the underbidder never bid on anything except modern baseball before and the card went for 4x-5x normal market on it. I guess the seller realized he had a live one and had a friend go at it. Sickening.

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Posted By: John S

That is truly awful. I would hope that the high bidder would tell the seller to stick it.

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Posted By: Bill Stone

Please help me understand your point--when I look at the bidding history it appears that the sucesssful bidder --derfknew--when the bidding was at $15.00 placed a bid of at least $103.49 on October 31--I assume it was a maximum bid --on November 3 q commodities entered two bids one of $88.88 and the other of 100.99 making him the second place finisher---my question who was the shill bidder?--was it the winning bidder ?was it greencrow who placed the whole series of small bids or q commodities-the second place finisher---? I frequently place a maximum bid in an amount that I would be willing to pay for a card ---sometimes a lot more than it might be "worth" but because I want it enough and I don't really care if someone bids less than me ( I would prefer that it not happen but expect that it might) in any event if I win the card I am pleased. So please help me understand who was the bad guy in this auction? Why did the buyer bid at least $103.49 on October 31 when the bidding was low if he did think he might have the price driven that high ? I just want to learn all the nuances of the ebay system to be a better informed bidder in the future. Thank you

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Posted By: Keith

The shill bidder is greencow. The seller either used another account or used a friends account. Those series of 20 bids, all right in a row are pathonomonic for shill bidding. The seller was trying to get the bid as high as he could without going over the winning bidders bid.

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Posted By: Bill Stone

Thanks Keith-I would have just thought it was the inexperience of a brand new bidder trying to get comfortable raising his bids each time ---the fact that he only took the bids to $75 and stopped and the fact that much more experienced bidders took the price from $75 to the final sale price seemed to indicate to me the value they placed on the card was much higher than what it was bid up to by the early bidder. I sure wonder if the underbidder and winning bidder feel they were robbed by the process? Thanks again.

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Posted By: Al Crisafulli

Are you sure? I just sold a card to this zero-feedback bidder last week. I got the impression that he was new to Ebay.

In looking at this auction, here's what it looks like to me:

On October 28, the bidder "mariaanneandpete" put in a high bid of $14 on the card, bringing the bid price up to $5.56.

On October 31, the bidder "greencrow72" put in a few bids on the card, but was always the underbidder because "mariaanneandpete" had a high bid of $14. "Greencrow72" put in a few bids, searching for the high bid price, until becoming the high bidder at $15.

Later that same day, derfknew put in a bid of more than $103.49 on the card, and became the high bidder with a bid price of $16. Greencrow72 came back and did the same thing as last time - bidding higher and higher, looking for the high bid price until he got to $70. But derfknew's high bid was well over $100.

A few other bidders got involved and continued to take the card price up - but derfknew set his bid price so high on October 31 that nobody was able to eclipse it.

I'm not sure this is shill bidding as much as it is an example of a high bidder who should have placed a snipe, but instead placed a bid so high that he thought nobody else would possibly go that high. "Greencrow72" stopped bidding at $75, but other people kept running up the bid price for another $28 before giving up.

-Al

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Posted By: warshawlaw

1. The bidder has no record of buying boxing cards, only modern shiny baseball stuff. Why the sudden interest in a boxing card?

2. The card is readily found in conditions much better than the one offered for far less money on Ebay. If the bidder really wanted one of these, he could have found one for less money almost any day of the week in the rather small (usually about 9 pages) boxing card section. Instead, he went to the trouble of incrementally raising the bids on this card over the course of two days. A PSA 7 closed for under $14 on November 2nd also listed in the same category (8714733776).

I'm sorry, I just don't buy that as the real story.

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Posted By: Al Crisafulli

I know less than zero about boxing cards. So if a PSA-7 of this card went for $14, why would THREE people bid over $75 for this one?

I could see derfknew putting in a ridiculous bid so he'd know he was going to win the card. I could see a shill driving up the price in that instance. But why would two other people take the bids from $75 to $100 if the card is readily available in higher grades for a fraction of the price?

-Al