Thoughts on Buying from Legendary

[Leon]

Hey, you guys quit throwing Scott and I (B & L) under the bus, would ya'? We are still young in the auction business but have done no wrong and our intent is to do no wrong. If you want to see real market prices check our auctions. I can't really give opinions of other auction houses but only very few come to mind where I don't think anything wrong has happened. I will leave it at that . best regards

[Peter_Spaeth]

Yes Jeff you can look at it in that reductionist way, but typically the gap between the value of a card altered v. as holdered will be a hell of a lot more than a bid level or two.

[calvindog]

I don't doubt that. But I also think that in any given auction, the incidence of shill bidding per lot might be greater than the incidence of altered cards offered.

And for argument's sake, if an altered card is in a numbered holder the owner of that card very well might be able to get his purchase price back upon resale; the same cannot be said for the buyer of a shilled card at auction. How many of you have sold cards on ebay and wondered why the hell you can't get back even close to your purchase price?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by calvindog

I don't doubt that. But I also think that in any given auction, the incidence of shill bidding per lot might be greater than the incidence of altered cards offered.

Depends who the consignors are. And I would go with altered cards, generally speaking.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Jeff for non-commodity cards, the conversion of one buyer to a seller can significantly affect the price. EDIT TO ADD Also ebay's increment structure inherently makes for lower prices. So shilling is not always the explanation.

[calvindog]

None of this is an exact science without a review of the bidding records of any auction. And we have learned from Mastro's destruction of bidding records that the crooks will do anything they can to avoid having to disclose them. Doug Allen probably still has his third grade baseball jersey squirreled away somewhere but bidding records? No, they had to go.

[botn]

Originally Posted by calvindog

How many of you have sold cards on ebay and wondered why the hell you can't get back even close to your purchase price?

Not a fair conclusion Jeff. eBay's 24/7 365 format makes it tough to get buyers' attention. An auction that takes place on a specific date with an accompanied catalog permits buyers to make the date in the calendar. Not everyone who buys cards can sit around scanning ebay every day.

Further I am quite certain that the number of altered cards in holders and bogus authenticated memorabilia far surpasses the incidents of shill bidding (even if you are counting number of individual shill bids placed). I am absolutely certain that if you were able to measure how much the card doctor/dealers have made over the years it would dwarf the total amount of bids which constitute shill bids over the same period. It is safe to say that the principals of auction houses are not making as much as individual dealers who trim up cards, and by whatever means available to them, get them into holders and then pass the worthless items off to collectors.

[Orioles1954]

What percentage of lots in a given Mastro Auction (or any other suspected auctions) do you all think were/have been shilled?

[calvindog]

Greg/Mike: I didn't mean to use ebay as a sole example for resale. Poor resale prices in consecutive auctions for the same cards is evident as well, the only difference being lack of fraud in the latter auctions.

And Greg, I appreciate your insight as to altered cards and would love to hear more. As you know, my belief that Mastro (and other auction houses) have been engaged in shill bidding for years was first sparked simply by looking at the anecdotal proof from the auctions themselves: bidding patterns, final prices, etc. I thought it was pretty obvious and I feel certain today that my beliefs were well-founded. I'm not an expert on altered cards but would appreciate learning more as to how the doctors work on alterations and, just as importantly, work with the auction house heads.

[botn]

Jeff,

I am in no way implying that shill bidding does not exist. Was just trying to point out that it is my opinion that card and memorabilia altering is a much larger business.

We are presented graded altered cards and, more often than not, the alteration is right in front of our face yet buyers will purchase the card anyway. My experience has demonstrated that many buyers prefer to just rely on the grade assigned to the card rather than making their own assessment of the quality of the card. Be it a desire to fill a hole in the collection or a lack of expertise, they will rely on the graded holder to tell them what they are getting, even if it is misleading. So it is not like there has been a precedent set by collectors to ever mitigate their damages.

Bids are placed in auction houses without the public knowing who they are bidding against. How can any of us, absent complete bidding records, say with certainty that we were shilled? Shouldn't we try to clean up the obvious before we start looking for things which are more uncertain and less quantifiable?

When a top all is placed, and if it is maxed out artificially, that is the price the buyer was willing to pay. Not implying that is what they should pay or how the system should work but how does that differ in form to a buyer deciding to plop down money for his encapsulated trimmed card in which he will be overpaying for that card whose true value is a very small percentage of what is being considered?

Don’t know about you but if I had to pick I would prefer to pay too much for an item which is exactly what it is deemed to be rather than to buy something which I can later find out to be a product of some card doctors efforts that never should have been graded.

[calvindog]

Greg, shill bidding is provable without bidding records if the circumstantial evidence is there; proving it is also helped with co-conspirator or other witness testimony. As for the altered cards in our hobby, the first thing that I suppose has to happen is that the people who are doing it need to be outed as do the sellers of altered material. Some people have been willing to do it, others won't

Finally, if a top-all bid is placed, the fact that the bidder is willing to pay that amount does not in any way mitigate the fraud committed by a shill bidder who places a bid below that ceiling, nor does the top-all bid equate to what the card is properly valued. Only when there are legitimate bids placed in an auction can such a true figure be reached. Of course, if a collector makes an arms-length offer for such a card at that price then it's a different story, but we're not talking about that here.

[camlov2]

Originally Posted by calvindog

Greg/Mike: I didn't mean to use ebay as a sole example for resale. Poor resale prices in consecutive auctions for the same cards is evident as well, the only difference being lack of fraud in the latter auctions.

A lower price in a second auction doesn't mean that some type of fraud occured in the first. It is of course possible but not a given.

I would guess that many times two people bid against each other driving a price much higher then expected. Every so often the winner choses to resell quickly due to regret, need of money.....

With one of the two main bidders now out of the picture the same item is likely to sell for much less.

[Rich Klein]

Didn't you see my smiley face after my comment

But on certain cards; restoring them to 1-3 is actually an easier gig; for if you're a grading company and the card is like $1K and in bad condition; do you automatically question said card like you would a higher grade example.

And, in the 1980's, we had really good 1953 Topps Mantle fakes running around North Jersey, and the funny thing was those cards would be vg/ex and not better (I think there were some other cards as well). But the reason the fakes worked so well WAS that they were in vg/ex condition and if you were a store owner, would you think that such a card was faked?

Regards
Rich

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by camlov2

A lower price in a second auction doesn't mean that some type of fraud occured in the first. It is of course possible but not a given.

I would guess that many times two people bid against each other driving a price much higher then expected. Every so often the winner choses to resell quickly due to regret, need of money.....

With one of the two main bidders now out of the picture the same item is likely to sell for much less.

Theoretical possibilities can explain away most fraud; however, statistically when you need a 1 in 10 thing to occur 400 times in a row it becomes an impossibility. Welcome to the world of Mastro.