Can't fight City Hall- eBay protecting their large sellers (probstein content)

[SAllen2556]

As a collector, I don’t want anyone bidding on a card they don’t want to win, but artificially boosting the price of an eBay auction can occur in other ways besides the seller or the consigner directly shilling the card, so in the long run, what’s really the difference?

Say I’m selling what I believe to be a unique card on eBay. I set my price very high. I notice after I set my price that someone else is now auctioning the very same card and it looks like it will sell for much, much lower than mine, so I place a bid or two to jack up the price in order to protect the value of my card. Wouldn’t that have the same result to the eventual buyer of that card as if it were shilled? Should that also be illegal if it could be proven?

Shilling might as well be legal and accepted as part of the dynamics of an auction. After all, there is a risk, reward factor to the person who shills, and anyone can artificially increase an auction price if they have the guts to do it.