1964 topps tatoos shill bidding galore bassik and morris

[Sean1125]

Originally Posted by bobsbbcards

Not questioning the legitimacy of the auctions one bit, but I'm truly baffled why people would pay some of these prices for raw cards that have absolutely no chance to grade higher than advertised if sent in for grading.

Take the 1956 Topps Clemente EX-MT card that was shown as selling for $390. Here's a scan:



Average VCP for a PSA 7 is $386.93. One sold on March 19th for $354. One sold on March 1st for $382.59.

Clearly the raw card shown is NOT a PSA 7 (6 at best, and that's debatable), yet it sells for more than one?!? Huh?

I would agree with an earlier statement that someone made saying Greg has a cult following.

[MattyC]

Here's what some people don't get, and I will use myself as an example to illustrate the point:

I collect something other than cards. It's not my main focus but every several months I will look to splurge on some of these items. They are readily available on ebay, often for much cheaper than I wind up spending on them. But I am not super knowledgable on the market nuances for these items; I am not sure who the legit sellers are, and who is selling knockoffs, or how prevalent knockoffs are, though I suspect quite prevalent.

So what I do, is instead of bargain hunting on ebay through various sellers of unknown reputation, I willingly and happily pay top dollar and then some to get what I want, in one shot, from one guy whom I know is 100% legit, selling legit stuff.

And if he were to run auctions, I would only buy these items from him, and slug it out with other bidders, including those like myself-- who are loyal to this guy. I know I may in some cases be paying way over what I could find these items for elsewhere, but I am too busy to learn the seller landscape and am happy to pay a fat premium for what I want and the confidence in what I am getting, when I buy from this one point of sale.

Now if this is how one guy thinks with respect to one seller of a collectible, there are doubtless legions of others with the same mindset. And though I know how to parse a good card from a bad one no matter who the seller, there are likely many guys who think about cards the way I do about this other collectible.

This explains why some guys who have built a business, a reputation, and a following on a mass scale (the Probsteins, the PWCCs, the Morris, the Novellas, etc.) seem to get bidding and action that others don't. Many people are busy with work or other things and just want what they want, and are happy to "overpay" for confidence in seller and the items' legitimacy. Other sellers who do not get the same action should look to market themselves accordingly, so that they can enjoy the same benefits of a loyal following.

[Rich Klein]

Switching to a different board and a different seller:

A PSA board "insider" posted a thread thanking Probstein for getting him a very strong price on a 1973 Clemente in PSA 9; yet no one accused the bidding on that song of being shilled yet a weekly thread seems to be created about probstein shills. C'mon now, no one thought of that with that posting.

I think Matty said it well, when people have faith and confidence in an auction house sometimes fluky things happen.

Perhaps Larry you would like to try the services of Bassik and Morris


Rich

[sflayank]

thats ok...probstein pwcc gregmorris bassik hyee heritage etc etc
if it looks like a duck its a duck

[ALR-bishop]

Originally Posted by Sean1125

I would agree with an earlier statement that someone made saying Greg has a cult following.

If so, Sean, I hope it's not like that one on The Following

[nolemmings]

It appears to me that you don't know what a duck looks like. There were four tatoos that went for high prices. The guy who won the Killebrew didn't even bid on the other three--at all--so your statement that the 3 top bidders on these high-priced tats were all the same guys is false. As for the other three tats, they were the subject of high snipes placed by two guys, one of whom has a bid history of 9% with this seller-- hardly a guy who makes "virtually all" of his bids with him, so you're wrong again. He won one of the three. The other guy has a high bidding history of 73% with this seller, but he's only bid on 26 items total this past month. Four are on these tatoos and I would bet if you search the history on all the other tats he bid on several of them as well, because, geez I don't know, maybe he collects them and there was a set break?

The most important point is that the bidding by these guys were all snipes placed in the final few seconds of the auction. They did not bid before then. The whole purpose of shilling is to artificially pump up the price in hopes that some mark will keep bidding it up further. You can't do that very well now can you if you are bidding with 4-8 seconds to go--you give the sucker almost no time to see your bid and raise it. What, you hope that some guy who has not even shown up will bid in the few seconds remaining and that he will just happen to outbid you, or else you get stuck with an item you don't really want? Really? And the tatoos, which are mainly selling in the single digits but with some nicer looking commons hitting $50, are gonna motivate some shiller to throw out a $189 snipe for Norm Siebern because he's confident some sucker is going to outbid him in the last couple of seconds? Sure, that's what happened.

[MattyC]

Todd wins the internets today.

[Rich Klein]

Larry, how many of the Flood Tattoos in question do you have to sell at $5?

[sflayank]

lets see should i pay greg morris 25 for a dave nicholson thats cut in half or buy a full length nrmt one from columbia city( the most expensive dealer in town for $25)
or a frank howard for 40 or $25or 1/2 a norm cash for 31 or a full length one for 25
or a red sox logo in 1/2 for a 172....would u like to buy a full length one from me for 100 maybe u could sell it to the underbidder for 300
if u knew how to contact the underbidders like i do u would realize they will not buy anything from u for even half their top bids
all fakes

[sflayank]

he got 3500 for a set where 52 out of the 87 are cut in half
congratulations

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by sflayank

if u knew how to contact the underbidders like i do u would realize they will not buy anything from u for even half their top bids
all fakes

So you contact other sellers underbidders on Ebay, and offer to sell them stuff off-ebay, and you wonder why they don't pull the trigger?

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Todd wins the internets today.

That's interwebs, Matt. Sheesh, get it right.