Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[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.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I wish people would stop bringing up that text message lol because it really doesn't help the case against Brent.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I wish people would stop bringing up that text message lol because it really doesn't help the case against Brent.

It doesn't help because people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not that he told him he would be outbid (I could certainly say that about lots in my auction, especially fairly early on, without feeling like I was risking impropriety) it's the fact that Courtney WAS THE CONSIGNOR OF THE ITEM IN QUESTION. Or has age dulled my memory and he wasn't, in which case why does Brent care how he bids?

[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.

[Johnny630]

People are victims of their own ignorance and or laziness. All kinda of information is out their on PWCC. You can chose what you believe and what you don’t believe what you bid/but what you don’t it’s ok either way. Either way I think it’s cool to see how people think 🤔

[Johnny630]

People are victims of their own ignorance and or laziness. All kinda of information is out their on PWCC. You can chose what you believe and what you don’t believe what you bid/buy on along with what you don’t, it’s ok either way. Either way I think it’s cool to see how people think 🤔

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

Clearly, you guys don't understand the scale of what you are asking them to do or what it would take for them to "monitor their business" as you put it.

It's one thing to have an entire internet forum of free crowd-sourced resources with endless time on their hands and nothing better to do than clicking through random eBay listings in an effort to find someone who *might* be shill bidding their auctions. But it's something else entirely for a consignment company to be expected to hire a team to crawl through over 10,000 listings per week, mapping out eBay user IDs and cross-checking them to see which users might be shilling their consignments. This is an absolutely ridiculous expectation. Do you have any idea how much this would cost? Do you know how much it would cost just to set up and maintain a database alone to handle this, let alone the manpower? They've sold well in excess of a million eBay listings lol. Perhaps you don't realize that clicking on a 'bid history' link that shows eBay user IDs is not "access to the data". There's a huge difference between clicking links and seeing names and having the access to the data required to monitor something like this at scale and to be able to write code that enables you to intervene when necessary. When I say "they don't have access to the data", clearly this point has not landed with you guys. You clearly are not data people. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about here. You couldn't possibly have ever spent a day in your life in the tech industry if you actually expect them to do this. Meanwhile, this is an easy problem for eBay to solve. They already have the database set up with all the relevant data at their fingertips and the resources (data analysts & data scientists) to do it, not to mention the responsibility to do this. And let's not forget, they also already claim to do this on their website (even though they clearly do a shit job of it).

I have personally written fraud detection algorithms and have coded out large-scale projects just like this for my previous employer (a large insurance company). I know what it would take to accomplish what you guys are proposing. This is a huge undertaking. It's not just asking Billy and Sally to spot-check a few listings over their lunch break.

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Clearly, you guys don't understand the scale of what you are asking them to do or what it would take for them to "monitor their business" as you put it.

Actually, we do. It is called internal auditing and virtually all major corporations have a department dedicated to it.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by 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.

This is perhaps the single most ignorant post I've ever seen you make. You are miles out of your element here Peter. This is tantamount to me telling you how easy it should be to litigate one of your cases despite me never having spent even 5 minutes of my life in a law office.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I did it myself frequently, sort his auctions by price that is and look through the bidding on 10 or 20. It took no time at all. How arrogant of me.

This sort of sample was more than enough to identify certain types of recurring issues on expensive cards. You're missing the forest for the trees. You're also missing the human element, he knew who was doing what, and I base that on conversations as well as observation.

It's you who is out of your element, playing contrarian for some undisclosed purpose.

[Yoda]

Just to lighten up things here, I would seek others' opinions about PWCC's vault situation. How many cards have fled since their bad news broke? Of those that fled how many have already been consigned to auction houses, such as REA and Goldin who have actively solicited them? Or how many cards are back in the arms of their loving owners who are waiting for the dust to settle? Or how many cards have stayed in the vault and will make an appearance in PWCC's first independent auction? Much pondering.