Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

As you say, it isn't all that hard to find one suspicious transaction. What someone is not seeing here is what happens when you start to pull on that string. Maybe nothing. But, maybe the whole sweater comes unraveled.

I don't see how this entire sweater unraveling could possibly happen though simply from "pulling a few threads". Moreover, I would argue that pulling out a few threads not only fails to unravel the sweater but those threads will just be replaced by more threads the following day when 'bannedBidder123' comes back as 'bannedBidder1234'.

Let's just pretend for a moment that PWCC (or Probstein or whoever) hires an internal BODA-like team of researchers to hunt down these bad actors full-time. And let's just pretend for a moment that the labor is entirely free so that they don't have to raise their prices and can still compete in this market. Perhaps they can hire a crew of college interns whose lifelong dream is to save the hobby. Let's say they succeed in compiling a list of all the eBay usernames who certainly, or at least very likely, shill bid on their consignments (or the consignments of others and they were just trying to pump cards with no intention to pay if they win). So now they have this master list of 100,000+ eBay IDs. What next? They've already added as many of these people as they can to their blocked bidders list (5,000) and they already ban them internally from consigning with them again in the future. What next? Even if they succeed, those same people just consign with the next company and do it again. And even if they get reported enough to where eBay bans that account, 'iShillCards2' just pops up again as 'iShillCards3'. The juice here isn't even worth the squeeze when the squeeze is free. But, of course, in reality it's not free. It would be extremely expensive to hire a team to do this. And for what? The end result is the same unless eBay itself decides to take drastic measures to address this problem at the ground level. They need structural changes in place to combat this and they need to care about the problem first in order for it to go away. To place these expectations & responsibilities on the shoulders of the sellers is a prime example of missing the forest for the trees.

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I don't see how this entire sweater unraveling could possibly happen though simply from "pulling a few threads".

At this point, I think its is clearly established that you aren't able to conceptualize anything except through the prism of your experiences as a programmer. You can continue to construct all the hypotheticals and what-ifs you want to explain why you think such a thing is impossible. But, it is inescapably true that tens of thousands of companies do it everyday as part of the normal course of business. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it is unremarkable as things go.

You fancy yourself as some kind of devil's advocate pointing out the logical fallacies in everyone else's arguments. Yet, you seem to accept the PWCC story line with complete incredulity. Forgive me if this cuts too deeply, but I would remind you of what Feynman said:

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

And, with that, not only have we strayed from Small Traditions, we have strayed from even talking about cards. So, since every thread needs a card, but I am not a pre-war collector, here is an Obak I do have in my collection.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

At this point, I think its is clearly established that you aren't able to conceptualize anything except through the prism of your experiences as a programmer.

Ah yes, the old, "Snowman is too stupid to comprehend this" argument. The bottom line is that there is only one person in this thread who actually knows what they are talking about. There is only one person in this discussion who is not only capable of providing a solution to the problem of how to identify and eliminate fraud of this scale, but who also has direct experience solving such problems. I was hired to build precisely this sort of solution for a major insurance company here in CA several years back, and built out a fraud detection algorithm/predictive model that resulted in capturing and prosecuting widespread industry fraud. I've also been contacted numerous times by eBay's recruiters to join their team to do what sounded like similar work from the emails. However, I have no interest in working at eBay so I didn't respond. You guys can sit here and pretend like you know what you're talking about, but you don't. Sorting through the top 10 to 20 (or even hundreds) of listings randomly clicking around like a buffoon, writing user names down in your little notepad with no access to their user ID history or IP addresses and turning over your cute little list to the eBay police is not going to solve this problem. If this was PWCC's own platform, then yes, of course it would be their problem to solve. But it's not their platform. It's eBay's platform and eBay is the only entity with the resources necessary and available to solve it. All of these "solutions" you guys keep coming up with are tantamount to trying to cut down a redwood tree with a pocket knife.

[Peter_Spaeth]

LOL but I am the arrogant one. What a piece of work you are. And it's all a straw man, I never proposed a solution to all the fraud on ebay, so you are attacking something that never was offered for that purpose. Buffoon indeed. Maybe a little reading comprehension would be in order for you. And how long before your massive ego problem causes you to self-destruct here as it did on BO?

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

LOL but I am the arrogant one. What a piece of work you are. And it's all a straw man, I never proposed a solution to all the fraud on ebay, so you are attacking something that never was offered for that purpose. Buffoon indeed. Maybe a little reading comprehension would be in order for you. And how long before your massive ego problem causes you to self-destruct here as it did on BO?

Yet with all your wisdom and humility, you still somehow cannot seem to grasp the simple fact that eBay is the only entity that houses the keys to the door you wish to unlock.

You honestly think that PWCC could and should just hire a team of BODA-like researchers to go on an eBay bidder hunting spree, clicking away at random links (sorry, 'sorted' links, perhaps just the top 10 or 20 ought to do) and suddenly all is well in shill bidding land. Perhaps Brent himself could get this all done over a coffee break or two?

I've pointed out numerous very specific problems to every solution you guys have put forward here. None of you have addressed a single one of them. I have pointed out the scale of how many auctions they're doing (over 10,000 listings per month, and millions in total). I have asked what you propose they should do even if they could find a way to compile this magic list of 100,000+ naughty eBay userIDs for free. Again, you provided no answers. I asked how much manpower you thought it would take to research and address this problem. Again, crickets. You're not here for an honest conversation or dialogue. You're just here to sling mud. At PWCC, at Probstein, at me. You have no interest in listening to someone with real-world experience in what it actually takes to solve a problem like this. Nope. You're the expert!

"Just sort by the top 10 to 20 listings and look at the bid histories. You don't need a data scientist for that."
- Peter S., September, 2021

[Peter_Spaeth]

You're completely missing my point -- you just keep mischaracterizing it and making it much bigger than it is in order to knock it down -- so I'll give up. I haven't said a word about Probstein, by the way, so stop falsely accusing me.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

You're completely missing my point -- you just keep mischaracterizing it and making it much bigger than it is in order to knock it down -- so I'll give up. I haven't said a word about Probstein, by the way, so stop falsely accusing me.

OK, so since you think I'm mischaracterizing it, please explain it as you see it then. I'll be civil. I'm honestly open to other solutions if you have one to propose. Here are some questions that I think we can probably agree would be important to ask when considering any solutions one might put forward.

1. What, specifically, is the shill bidding problem that you think PWCC should be responsible for preventing?
2. What do you think the scale of that problem is?
3. How do you think PWCC can solve this problem?
4. How much do you think your proposed solution would cost to implement?
5. How effective do you believe your solution would be with respect to the percentage of reduction in shilled listings?

[packs]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Yet with all your wisdom and humility, you still somehow cannot seem to grasp the simple fact that eBay is the only entity that houses the keys to the door you wish to unlock.

You honestly think that PWCC could and should just hire a team of BODA-like researchers to go on an eBay bidder hunting spree, clicking away at random links (sorry, 'sorted' links, perhaps just the top 10 or 20 ought to do) and suddenly all is well in shill bidding land. Perhaps Brent himself could get this all done over a coffee break or two?

I've pointed out numerous very specific problems to every solution you guys have put forward here. None of you have addressed a single one of them. I have pointed out the scale of how many auctions they're doing (over 10,000 listings per month, and millions in total). I have asked what you propose they should do even if they could find a way to compile this magic list of 100,000+ naughty eBay userIDs for free. Again, you provided no answers. I asked how much manpower you thought it would take to research and address this problem. Again, crickets. You're not here for an honest conversation or dialogue. You're just here to sling mud. At PWCC, at Probstein, at me. You have no interest in listening to someone with real-world experience in what it actually takes to solve a problem like this. Nope. You're the expert!

"Just sort by the top 10 to 20 listings and look at the bid histories. You don't need a data scientist for that."
- Peter S., September, 2021

Nobody really wants to know how eBay runs it's business. The issue the board has with certain sellers is that THEY have no control over their own auctions re: shill bidding. Or at least that is the claim we're supposed to believe.

But it becomes obvious that if one seller is selling their cards for more than any other seller gets on the same platform using the same search terminology, it is because something is different about how that seller is running their auctions, not because that seller has the right audience. All the sales take place in front of the same audience.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by packs

Nobody really wants to know how eBay runs it's business. The issue the board has with certain sellers is that THEY have no control over their own auctions re: shill bidding. Or at least that is the claim we're supposed to believe.

I agree with you here. It is certainly frustrating that the consignment companies have almost no control over who bids on their listings (other than adding someone to their blocked bidders list, which as has been pointed above caps out at 5,000 users and is insufficient for resolving this issue).

Originally Posted by packs

But it becomes obvious that if one seller is selling their cards for more than any other seller gets on the same platform using the same search terminology, it is because something is different about how that seller is running their auctions, not because that seller has the right audience. All the sales take place in front of the same audience.

I have to disagree with you here. Your statement assumes that everyone is searching eBay the same way - i.e., they're all typing in '1955 Topps Roberto Clemente' into the search bar and when one shows up that they like, they just bid on it, and that furthermore, they are every bit as willing to bid the same amount regardless of who the seller is. But in practice, this is not how it works. People use eBay in very different ways.

First, there's the issue of buyer's confidence. Having nice clear images that you can zoom in on will always outsell another listing of the same card with blurry pics. Buying from a seller with supernova feedback of 100,000+ ratings will always outsell 'jimbob007' with his (18) feedback score. Obviously there's no shortage of other reputable sellers on eBay, but if you compare a company who does all of those little things right against the overall market, they're going to outsell the competition for those reasons alone. But the biggest factor in how much an item sells for is hands down the number of eyes a seller can get on that auction. And this is where sellers like PWCC and Probstein far outweigh the competition. Just click on the user name of a given seller and you can see how many followers they have. I build predictive models for a living, and I can guarantee you if I were to build a model to predict card prices on eBay, that not only would this factor correlate to auction prices realized, it would probably be the #1 most relevant factor in the model outside of the card itself and the slab it's in. Here's a quick comparison of a few consigment companies:

PWCC (312295) - 43,944 followers still today, despite no longer selling on eBay
Probstein123 (893960) - 57,861 followers
quickconsignment_802 (37054) - 2,682 followers
gregmorriscards (312064) - 13,665 followers
4sharpcorners (312086) - 9,321 followers
sportscardauctionscom (91092) - 4,046 followers
bigboydsportscards (345236) - 12,816 followers
pcsportscards (45465) - 6,371 followers

Note that PWCC, 4sharpcorners, and gregmorriscards all have ~312,000 feedback (a fun coincidence) yet PWCC has more than 3x the number of followers as GM and 4x that of 4SC! And they certainly had even more than that before being banned from eBay. Marketing matters, and PWCC has learned this far better than their competition. Many other consignment companies have not. People in social media even do live PWCC auction watch parties. I just received a PWCC auction catalog in the mail this weekend. I get notifications from Probstein and PWCC on social media all the time, showing me cards that are up for auction that I never even would have thought to look for. I get email blasts from them as well. And PWCC organized thier listings intelligently. All 1950s baseball ending together around the same time, all 1990s basketball cards together, etc. People would log in and just sort PWCC listings by themselves and see what else was up for sale. This doesn't happen with other random sellers. And most sellers have next to zero followers, or just a few dozen. The only way their cards get seen is if someone specifically searches for that card and finds their listing.

Followers matter. Setting up your auctions in an organized manner matters as well. It's all about getting the most eyes on that listing. Say what you want about PWCC, but they were masters of this aspect of selling. Everyone else should be taking notes.

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Ah yes, the old, "Snowman is too stupid to comprehend this" argument.

I never said that.

I will say this though: you are ignorant. You are ignorant in the same way we are all ignorant: outside our areas of expertise there is a vast world we know very little about and have to rely on other experts to navigate successfully. I am sure, within your area of specialty, you are every bit as brilliant as you have told us you are.

I know several accountants just at my current employer that I could turn loose on a huge dataset and within a week they would be back with a long list of anomalous transactions and a fully fleshed out audit plan to keep themselves busy for months on end. The fact that you are incapable of understanding that this is possible is not evidence that it is impossible. Failure of imagination is not an argument.

FWIW, the only T206 I own, a trimmed Frank Delehanty.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

...you are ignorant... outside our areas of expertise there is a vast world we know very little about and have to rely on other experts to navigate successfully...

I know several accountants just at my current employer that I could turn loose on a huge dataset and within a week they would be back with a long list of anomalous transactions and a fully fleshed out audit plan to keep themselves busy for months on end. The fact that you are incapable of understanding that this is possible is not evidence that it is impossible. Failure of imagination is not an argument.

Oof. I don't even know where to begin with this one. So I guess I'll just leave it be. You guys just have no idea what you're talking about. Accountants? Keeping themselves busy for months on end? lol.

1983 called. They want their "solution" back.

[Republicaninmass]

I find it disturbing Brent knew Courney's bidding ID, among the "millions" of Ebay bidders. Also had his cell phone # to communicate outside Ebay. It would not take more than a dozen or so "courtneys" to skew hundreds of sales. Say 2 dozen, and there is a new marketplace...see what I did there

[ALBB]

now leaning towards snowman

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

I find it disturbing Brent knew Courney's bidding ID, among the "millions" of Ebay bidders. Also had his cell phone # to communicate outside Ebay. It would not take more than a dozen or so "courtneys" to skew hundreds of sales. Say 2 dozen, and there is a new marketplace...see what I did there

That alone doesn't bother me, someone wins an auction of yours once and you know who he is, and Courtney was a frequent bidder and probably frequent winner. Probably a consignor too. Why wouldn't Brent know a major customer's ID?

But look at Brent's own posts from 2016, he knew who the guys were -- and it was 12-20 as best I can tell -- who were as he put it pushing the market.