Question about detecting shilling

[itjclarke]

I'd never even thought to check for it until seeing how prominently shilling is mentioned in posts. That said, totally agree, no sense getting too paranoid. I'm not sure I've ever bid/paid more than I was originally "willing" to spend (willing is a loose term). I do think there may have been a few auctions, where I've paid nearer the FULL amount of my bid, watching that gap between "current bid" and my bid close in the last second, than I'd have liked... but all in all, as long as I'm not paying hugely over the market, or what I was originally planning to, I guess I won't worry too much.

Thanks for the feeback

[deadballera]

All bidders have their own bidding style

Some do small increment bids while others do larger


some bid in 5/10 dollar increments and other will use odd numbers.


shill bidders majority of the time will have very low feedback numbers

[camlov2]

I don't think I have ever used a bid that is a "normal" amount, all of mine end in a 1, 3, 7 and never a 0 or 5. I don't think this or the small increments mean it is a shill.
38% seems a little high for a single seller but if you find one person you trust I can understand the repeat business. With 800+ that seems like a lot of repeat business.

[D. Bergin]

The 38% is only for the last 30 days, not for their entire bidding history. It's not unusual at all.

I have yet to understand the theory that anybody who doesn't evenly spread their bids all over Ebay in a 30 day period, must be a shiller.

The biggest hints to me would be a low feedback bidder, with tons of bids with exclusively the same seller, lots of bid retractions and 2nd chance offers being sent out by the seller, almost immediately after the auction.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think more highly of most of the quality sellers on Ebay to think they'd waste their time and reputation with such shenanigans.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems all too common for charges of shilling to be flippantly made, without care of the damage it might do to an honest seller.

Bidders are all different and take different paths. Any seller who has done it on a regular basis for any amount of time sees strange bidding patterns on their items all the time.

[novakjr]

I gotta agree with Dave. There's alot of people that view bidding as a mental competition, and that often leads to unusual, sometimes seemingly reckless bidding patterns.. This recklessness is many times used as the blue-print for shilling. Shilling, if done properly(not that there's anything proper about it) should be almost undetectable. It's probably happened to all of us at one time or another without knowing it..

[Anthony S.]

An easy way to determine if they are shilling is if their name is Broadway Rick.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

The 38% is only for the last 30 days, not for their entire bidding history. It's not unusual at all.

I have yet to understand the theory that anybody who doesn't evenly spread their bids all over Ebay in a 30 day period, must be a shiller.

The biggest hints to me would be a low feedback bidder, with tons of bids with exclusively the same seller, lots of bid retractions and 2nd chance offers being sent out by the seller, almost immediately after the auction.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think more highly of most of the quality sellers on Ebay to think they'd waste their time and reputation with such shenanigans.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems all too common for charges of shilling to be flippantly made, without care of the damage it might do to an honest seller.

Bidders are all different and take different paths. Any seller who has done it on a regular basis for any amount of time sees strange bidding patterns on their items all the time.

And even then it might not be shilling. I had an item I was underbidder on with all those red flags. And it turned out to be totally legit. Shilling does happen, but I don't panic and see shills behind every odd bidding pattern.

But if you do, keep right on doing it. In that case, I eventually ended up with the item from the second chance offer for less. And it was nicer than the first one offered.

Steve B

[pgellis]

I also think that with fewer and fewer real auctions on eBay, there are fewer and fewer dealers who actually auction off their items all the time, so you are bound to have some collectors bidding on a lot of a particular dealers auctions since there are so many BINs exclusively now.

I know for me, collecting SGC graded T206s, there are very few dealers that regularly have legitimate auctions on eBay and I seem to bid on their items a lot.......maybe even more than 38% with one of them.

[itjclarke]

Thanks for all the input.. I also do bid in small, irregular increments, so what I saw is probably not too far off what I look like (excepting the 38%). I guess at the end of the day, a healthy bit of cynicism and caution is good, but I won't over think this subject going forward.

Some of the other instances brought up by board members that I'd read about (and got my attention) were much more obvious... Very low feedback totals and 80-90% bid activity with less reputable sellers... These were subject of recent threads, and specifically about some of those raw card auctions that were selling for seemingly more than their graded equivalents.

[U240robert]

I've seen suspicious bidding as well since I've been on ebay, which goes back to when the site first started. It's really hard to pinpoint.
Ebay says that it becomes suspicious when a bidder only bids on certain dealers (like one or two)
However, in my experiences with dealers I tend to bid on the same few dealers over and over. I think one dealer I've won over 400 auctions and I've never met him or know him. I just trust certain dealers with baseball cards and I'm sure I'm not the only one.