Is there a shilling cartel?

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Posted By: Rob

Seems like Maestro, Memory Lane, Edwards and every other auction house around could shill, as they commonly have the "15 minute rule". Which means the consignor could try to engage someone in a bidding war if the closing time bid of an item was low. I observed in my hometown an auctioneer bid on other auction house items to keep the price up on certain items.

On the other hand, Ebay only gives a set ending time, allowing for snipe bids to be entered. What you have on a rare and desirable item is essentially blind bidding, as snipers don't usually have time to put in a 2nd bid at the end of an auction. An example: I put in a high $30 bid on an item with 10 seconds left, which was sniped with a $250 and $255 bids. If only one of those bids were there, the item goes for $31. I could had went higher with more time, and would had went higher than $31 for a bidding war, if Ebay was a real auction.

At most, someone can provide a hidden reserve on an item with a given bid (perhaps 1 of those $245+ bids was a reserve), as there are few bidding wars on items to drive up the price of an item. Bidders are generally sophisticated enough to give snipe bids or an incremental bid where shilling can't be effective.