Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I mostly just like playing devil's advocate, or at least think that all sides should be considered in discussions. I hate when groupthink starts off with a set of assumptions (which are often invalid) and these discussions just build and build on top of them without those assumptions being challenged. This shill bidding topic is a prime example. People have been accusing PWCC of shill bidding (PWCC themselves, not just their consignors) for years. Before this whole eBay scandal blew up, whenever people were asked to provide evidence of these shill bidding claims, the crowd always pointed to the fact that PWCC got higher prices for their cards than other eBay sellers. This is of course absurd, and in no way constitutes evidence, or even suggests, that PWCC was shilling their own auctions.

What is actually absurd is that you just posted the above. If ya want to play devil’s advocate or challenge groupthink, ya might want to start posting actual facts and accurate statements. When you don’t…and you don’t…it is not really contributing to an honest debate. The closer I read you the more I see you don’t always really know what you are talking about. Not sure why more do not call you out, honestly.

Anyway your conclusion that ‘the crowd always pointed to the fact that PWCC got higher prices for their cards than other eBay sellers’ was a basis for their determining shill bidding at PWCC is as spot on as you asserting eBay was materially impacted by their banning PWCC. The crowd does not have access to eBay bidder records but even without those there were countless times it was demonstrated shill bidding occurred.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

What is actually absurd is that you just posted the above. If ya want to play devil’s advocate or challenge groupthink, ya might want to start posting actual facts and accurate statements. When you don’t…and you don’t…it is not really contributing to an honest debate. The closer I read you the more I see you don’t always really know what you are talking about. Not sure why more do not call you out, honestly.

Anyway your conclusion that ‘the crowd always pointed to the fact that PWCC got higher prices for their cards than other eBay sellers’ was a basis for their determining shill bidding at PWCC is as spot on as you asserting eBay was materially impacted by their banning PWCC. The crowd does not have access to eBay bidder records but even without those there were countless times it was demonstrated shill bidding occurred.

Plus (as has already been pointed out) there is a publicly posted text message interchange in which Brent himself instructs his "minion" to place the shill bid. I don't have time to find it, but it's been well publicized. Perhaps Snowman conveniently forgot about that minor detail?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by perezfan

Plus (as has already been pointed out) there is a publicly posted text message interchange in which Brent himself instructs his "minion" to place the shill bid. I don't have time to find it, but it's been well publicized. Perhaps Snowman conveniently forgot about that minor detail?

I am the last guy on earth to defend Brent, but I actually think that particular text message in context is not that damning.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I am the last guy on earth to defend Brent, but I actually think that particular text message in context is not that damning.

Well maybe not, to an accomplished attorney. I'm sure his words could be twisted and interpreted in similar fashion to Bill Clinton trying to define the word "is". But to the average collector schmuck like me, it looked awfully bad. I personally did not see much of a grey area.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by perezfan

Well maybe not, to an accomplished attorney. I'm sure his words could be twisted and interpreted in similar fashion to Bill Clinton trying to define the word "is". But to the average collector schmuck like me, it looked awfully bad. I personally did not see much of a grey area.

It's not that nuanced. Courtney was string bidding on a card but had stopped one level below taking the lead; the card was still well below market value as I recall. Brent said just take the lead for now it's a bad look when you string bid but stop short. Given where the bidding was, I didn't see it as trying to run the card up. That said, I would guess Courtney had lots of stuff that was much more damning.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

If ya want to play devil’s advocate or challenge groupthink, ya might want to start posting actual facts and accurate statements. When you don’t…and you don’t…it is not really contributing to an honest debate. The closer I read you the more I see you don’t always really know what you are talking about. Not sure why more do not call you out, honestly.

Feel free to respond to anything I say that you believe is not factual or an accurate statement. I have no interest in spreading non-truths and always welcome being corrected.

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

Anyway your conclusion that ‘the crowd always pointed to the fact that PWCC got higher prices for their cards than other eBay sellers’ was a basis for their determining shill bidding at PWCC is as spot on as you asserting eBay was materially impacted by their banning PWCC. The crowd does not have access to eBay bidder records but even without those there were countless times it was demonstrated shill bidding occurred.

I don't know what your point is here. However, all three statements are true.

• "The crowd" does constantly point to the fact that PWCC & Probstein get higher prices for their cards as the basis for their claims about both shilling their own auctions.

• eBay was materially impacted by their banning PWCC

• The crowd does not have access to eBay bidder records but even without those there were countless times it was demonstrated shill bidding occurred.

That said, and for some reason I feel like a broken record with the constant need to point out the obvious here, but there is a massive difference between demonstrating that shill bidding occurred and demonstrating that the consignment company itself is the one doing the shill bidding. Similarly, and perhaps also worth repeating, there is a massive difference between saying "PWCC shilled their own auctions" and "individuals associated with PWCC shilled their auctions".

[Peter_Spaeth]

There's a third category -- the auction house knew consignors were bidding up their own items, allowed it, and perhaps even facilitated it by cancelling sales if they won.

[Snowman]

To be clear, my point about eBay repeatedly acquiring smaller auction sites over the years wasn't to imply that they were doing something illegal or even shady by doing that. I have no reason to believe that any of these acquisitions weren't above board, and I think most were probably fairly savvy business decisions by eBay. I was mainly just pointing out the fact that it is evidence that eBay very much does take seriously their competition, even if that competitor is small relative to eBay. I am arguing that regardless of why eBay sent out that email, they definitely view/ed PWCC as a threat, and there is no shortage of very public examples of eBay attempting to minimize threats to their business, regardless of how small you think those threats might be (and PWCC is a much larger threat than many of the companies they've acquired or sought to acquire over the years). This in itself, of course, is not proof that they sent out that email for the sole intent of damaging PWCC's brand. However, I am simply pointing out that eBay has certainly established a precedent for this to be quite plausible.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Feel free to respond to anything I say that you believe is not factual or an accurate statement. I have no interest in spreading non-truths and always welcome being corrected.



I don't know what your point is here. However, all three statements are true.

• "The crowd" does constantly point to the fact that PWCC & Probstein get higher prices for their cards as the basis for their claims about both shilling their own auctions.

• eBay was materially impacted by their banning PWCC

• The crowd does not have access to eBay bidder records but even without those there were countless times it was demonstrated shill bidding occurred.

That said, and for some reason I feel like a broken record with the constant need to point out the obvious here, but there is a massive difference between demonstrating that shill bidding occurred and demonstrating that the consignment company itself is the one doing the shill bidding. Similarly, and perhaps also worth repeating, there is a massive difference between saying "PWCC shilled their own auctions" and "individuals associated with PWCC shilled their auctions".

"The crowd" does constantly point to the fact that PWCC & Probstein get higher prices for their cards as the basis for their claims about both shilling their own auctions. Which is it...constantly or always and whenever, as your initial post stated? Either way, so every time an accusation of shill bidding has been made by the crowd it always/constantly pointed to high prices as the reason? You need to read all the threads again. Neither constantly nor always are accurate on the frequency of the crowd using higher prices as the proof of shill bids.

eBay was materially impacted by their banning PWCC Define material because based on ebay's gross sales revenue of more than 10 billion, 7.5 million in fees paid by PWCC (which is significantly higher number than they paid) would not meet the definition of materiality.

That said, and for some reason I feel like a broken record with the constant need to point out the obvious here, but there is a massive difference between demonstrating that shill bidding occurred and demonstrating that the consignment company itself is the one doing the shill bidding. Similarly, and perhaps also worth repeating, there is a massive difference between saying "PWCC shilled their own auctions" and "individuals associated with PWCC shilled their auctions" I understand your distinguishing between the two but in my view if the company does not take steps to discourage shill bidding by consignors then they are almost as guilty as if the company engages in shill bidding itself. If PWCC knew several consignors were suspected of it, why keep taking their consignments? Further I am pretty confident the FBI and eBay can demonstrate shill bidding within the company. Not sure it would be that difficult to prove.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In the days before Brent blocked bid histories, and even more so when some of us knew who some of the bidders were, it was a lot more than prices realized that drove suspicion: massive string bidding, massive early bidding, people bidding on widely disparate cards that it seemed unlikely the same collector would collect, known market pushers even by Brent's admission bidding heavily, and perhaps above all tolerance of huge numbers of retractions. There were other anomalies too in the bidding sometimes that just looked bad. Could someone bound and determined to defend Brent offer a competing explanation in some cases? Sure. But overall, it was not a good look, at all.

[swarmee]

Remember when Brent claimed on this board that he was one of the power sellers that was going to fix shill bidding on ebay's platform? Those were the days.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Remember when Brent claimed on this board that he was one of the power sellers that was going to fix shill bidding on ebay's platform? Those were the days.

There is very little he won't say if he thinks it makes him look good.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

In the days before Brent blocked bid histories, and even more so when some of us knew who some of the bidders were, it was a lot more than prices realized that drove suspicion: massive string bidding, massive early bidding, people bidding on widely disparate cards that it seemed unlikely the same collector would collect, known market pushers even by Brent's admission bidding heavily, and perhaps above all tolerance of huge numbers of retractions. There were other anomalies too in the bidding sometimes that just looked bad. Could someone bound and determined to defend Brent offer a competing explanation in some cases? Sure. But overall, it was not a good look, at all.

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

There's a third category -- the auction house knew consignors were bidding up their own items, allowed it, and perhaps even facilitated it by cancelling sales if they won.

Such groupthink here. Consider other explanations that exonerate PWCC for a change.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

In the days before Brent blocked bid histories, and even more so when some of us knew who some of the bidders were, it was a lot more than prices realized that drove suspicion: massive string bidding, massive early bidding, people bidding on widely disparate cards that it seemed unlikely the same collector would collect, known market pushers even by Brent's admission bidding heavily, and perhaps above all tolerance of huge numbers of retractions. There were other anomalies too in the bidding sometimes that just looked bad. Could someone bound and determined to defend Brent offer a competing explanation in some cases? Sure. But overall, it was not a good look, at all.

I just don't understand how you guys see this as PWCC's (or insert any consignment company here) responsibility though. They don't have access to the data. This is ebay's platform, ebay's data, and ebay's responsibility. Are you really expecting consignment companies to crawl through all of their listings and webscrape user ID data (which is against ebay's TOS) and bid history and follow who bids on what, and try to track people down? You think they should have their own internal BODA team? Do you really not realize how ridiculous these expectations are in practice? I'll repeat: they don't have access to the database where all of this information is stored! Only eBay does. How does this point never land with you guys?

PWCC forces you to enter your eBay user ID on your vault account, and they send you a stern warning email if that account ID bids on one of its own listings, and then they will ban you if you do it again. This is more than any other consignment company does, as far as I'm aware. They also block all non paying bidders. And even then, they are limited to just 5,000 user IDs. What more can they do?

[Bram99]

Is anything in this thread about Small Traditions? Oh look, squirrel...

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I just don't understand how you guys see this as PWCC's (or insert any consignment company here) responsibility though. They don't have access to the data. This is ebay's platform, ebay's data, and ebay's responsibility. Are you really expecting consignment companies to crawl through all of their listings and webscrape user ID data (which is against ebay's TOS) and bid history and follow who bids on what, and try to track people down? You think they should have their own internal BODA team? Do you really not realize how ridiculous these expectations are in practice? I'll repeat: they don't have access to the database where all of this information is stored! Only eBay does. How does this point never land with you guys?

PWCC forces you to enter your eBay user ID on your vault account, and they send you a stern warning email if that account ID bids on one of its own listings, and then they will ban you if you do it again. This is more than any other consignment company does, as far as I'm aware. They also block all non paying bidders. And even then, they are limited to just 5,000 user IDs. What more can they do?

Maybe this will help...

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Leon

Maybe this will help...

With all due respect, I've read this screen shot dozens of times. It's a nothing burger as even Peter above acknowledged. This is not a communication where Brent is trying to get someone to shill their auction. This is him reprimanding Courtney for string bidding and not taking the high bid during the stages of an auction where the bids don't even matter anyhow.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Leon

Maybe this will help...

Am aware of and have seen this screen shot before, and regardless of the specific content, does anyone find it the least bit disconcerting that the owner of an AH/consignment company would be actively communicating with bidders like this during live auctions of items being sold by their company? Just off the top of my head, I know we have various members on here who also operate/own AH/consignment companies. Would be very interested to hear their takes on this and if they would (or have) ever have communicated with bidders during one of their ongoing auctions like this.

And in regards to people posting that an AH/consignment company doesn't have the time or ability to watch and monitor their auctions for suspicious and potential shill bidding activity, how then would the actual owner of the AH/consignment company ever have time to engage in communications such as this one? Clearly from the content of the messages it would seem that there had been some prior ongoing communications to what we see posted. So again, if this owner has the time to be aware of this one particular auction and the potential suspicious bidding activity in it, they would most certainly seem to have time to watch and pay attention to other auctions of theirs for suspicious shill bidding activities as well.

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I just don't understand how you guys see this as PWCC's (or insert any consignment company here) responsibility though. They don't have access to the data. This is ebay's platform, ebay's data, and ebay's responsibility. Are you really expecting consignment companies to crawl through all of their listings and webscrape user ID data (which is against ebay's TOS) and bid history and follow who bids on what, and try to track people down? You think they should have their own internal BODA team? Do you really not realize how ridiculous these expectations are in practice? I'll repeat: they don't have access to the database where all of this information is stored! Only eBay does. How does this point never land with you guys?

Because it is a nonsensical point.

You know who also doesn't have access to eBay's databases? Everyone else. Including laymen who can, based on publicly available information, easily point to circumstances that strongly indicate illegitimate (and likely illegal) bidding behavior. And guess what? While those laymen only have access to anonymized bidder IDs, PWCC has access to the full bidder ID. And, if PWCC is as important to eBay as you like to tell us ad nauseum that they are, then they are one phone call away from knowing the bidders name and address that can be checked against the consigner's.

PWCC forces you to enter your eBay user ID on your vault account, and they send you a stern warning email if that account ID bids on one of its own listings, and then they will ban you if you do it again.

What percentage of PWCC's sales are associated with the vault?

They also block all non paying bidders. And even then, they are limited to just 5,000 user IDs. What more can they do?

Let's review three random facts:

1. There is strong (albeit potentially circumstantial evidence) that illegitimate bidding behavior driving up realized prices on PWCC auctions.
2. PWCC apparently doesn't have an audit function to review sales for said illegitimate behavior.
3. PWCC bans non-paying bidders.

These three random facts have a common thread between them. Can you determine what that is?

[Peter_Spaeth]

As I've pointed out many times when I see idiocy like PWCC can't possibly monitor its own business, it takes a few minutes at most to sort your auctions by highest bid price and look through a given number for unusual activity.

Incidentally Brent was keenly aware of who was bidding at least on his big ticket cards. When we were on speaking terms he always knew who varous masked IDs were, and would also know who various serial retractors were.