Ron and Khyber Oser leave Legendary for Huggins

[gnaz01]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Are the Osers photo guys?

Khyber is

[1952boyntoncollector]

Still amazes me to hear people saying an auction like robert edwards that advertises and has a member list of the people who buy old cards ends up selling a card at 'rock bottom prices' easy for a seller to say that..

but as a buyer i would say thats 'market price' for that piece of cardboard..thats the highest bid..not on craiglist in a sale in a mother's attic..but on an internet weeks long auction with the most well heeled people bidding..

now you could say 'market price without shill bidding'..

i do wonder if you shill bid and 'win' your item.what happens? you just pay 20% and keep your card? that seems to take all of the market price profit out of it..

[bbcard1]

As to the shilling question, I'd never do it. Probably half the stuff i have consigned at auction houses have sold for less than I would have paid for it...of course the other half is where the good stuff happens.

[1952boyntoncollector]

right...50% good and 50% bad...we always here of the bad sells at auction..not the the good ones.....breaking even is good in a casino and for a hobbyist in cards.....actually breaking even is really good...losing a little money is good...breaking even is really good.

[mordecaibrown]

I've noticed a few people in this thread stating that they recently sold items that sold at low prices at a few different auction houses.

I believe that one of the lesser spoken about issues caused by shill bidding is a false value of an item. For instance, if a card sells for a $1000 in an auction but was shilled up to this amount, most buyers do not realize it was shilled to that value and assume a recent value for this card is $1000; however, without shilling, perhaps the card was really around $750.

Well, now this card (same grade) is auctioned in the future at another auction house. There are two possibilities: 1. If the auction house is dirty - they shill it up to the $1000 mark with the following result - buyer happy(bought a card at recent sales mark, seller happy sold card at recent mark, and house happy - optimized profit and look like a competitive auction house for future consignors. OR 2. Auction house is clean and does not shill and sells card at $750 with following results - buyer very happy and seller disappointed and going to different auction house in future.

Then future consignors go back to shilling auction houses because they want to optimize their sale and thinking clean auction house at fault. BUT - the clean auction house did optimize their sale - it was just sold at real market value and many of the previous sales were inflated due to shilling and causing the seller to have false hopes on value.

Shilling auctions causes many issues - one being false market value of items. Then when an auction house does not meet previous sales - people assume it was their fault. With shilling occurring in auction houses and ebay - when an item sells for less than it has previously, it may just have sold at the real (unskilled) market value by an honest businessman.

Hope this rambling made some sense.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Then future consignors go back to shilling auction houses because they want to optimize their sale and thinking clean auction house at fault. BUT - the clean auction house did optimize their sale - it was just sold at real market value and many of the previous sales were inflated due to shilling and causing the seller to have false hopes on value.

Shilling auctions causes many issues - one being false market value of items. Then when an auction house does not meet previous sales - people assume it was their fault. With shilling occurring in auction houses and ebay - when an item sells for less than it has previously, it may just have sold at the real (unskilled) market value by an honest businessman.

Hope this rambling made some sense.[/QUOTE]

--right..so the problem is the honest auction houses go out of business..but that reallly not a problem for the buyers....the buyer is overpaying based on one bid above them....buyers will start to look at price points several bids below to be safe with bids.....you can always adjust as a buyer and just refuse to bid..that will get prices down....but between auction houses thats a tough issue

even on ebay, there are guys doing it...so its going to happen everywhere..i know i have been to car auctions live and i've bid against the coke machine that the auctioneer appears to be pointing too....this happens in real life..so will of course happen in the more easier enviroment of the internet...market price will be adjusted....as long as sellers complain they arent getting 'market value' and are upset at bad sales..they will go to the auctions that give the best prices....and those same sellers who want to buy items will complain of shilling...

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

Still amazes me to hear people saying an auction like robert edwards that advertises and has a member list of the people who buy old cards ends up selling a card at 'rock bottom prices' easy for a seller to say that..

but as a buyer i would say thats 'market price' for that piece of cardboard..thats the highest bid..not on craiglist in a sale in a mother's attic..but on an internet weeks long auction with the most well heeled people bidding..

now you could say 'market price without shill bidding'..

i do wonder if you shill bid and 'win' your item.what happens? you just pay 20% and keep your card? that seems to take all of the market price profit out of it..

Market price is NOT the result of a single auction. You can argue all day about that one, but it simply isn't true. I sold an item for $3,100 that had previously sold at least twice for $6,000 or more. The market price didn't go from $6,000 to $3,100 overnight. If the card were put back in auction tomorrow with a reserve of $6,000 and I bid and won it back, would that change the market value back to $6,000? No.

REA is not any more immune to auction anomalies than any other auction house. They have things that we have seen go for twice what we thought market value is. And yes, they have had things go for rock bottom prices.

What happens if you (or one of your shillers) win your own auction? You get to keep owning it.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In the context of most of what we collect here, the concept of "market price" isn't really meaningful.