Shill Bidding defined

[Bram99]

I have a question. I was reading this article on Sportscard Radio site (never heard of this before a link was put up a few days ago on Net54) and they quoted PWCC's Betsy on her definition of shill bidding. The quote is copied below but it implies that one can bid on their own card at auction and it is not shill bidding as long as they intend to go through with the purchase. That seems to me to be an extremely lax standard for shill bidding. I always thought that if one put an item up for auction and ran the bids up themselves, that is shill bidding. Is there a common understanding in the hobby or in an auction setting at large?


Sports Card Radio was provided data of a recent 225 card PSA submission submitted by, or on the behalf of, Moser.

135 of those cards were placed in the PWCC Marketplace 2019 Premium Auction #3.

An eBay account associated with Moser, whitman111, placed a bid on 31 of the 135 cards submitted, resulting in two winning bids.

"I don’t know the eBay user IDs of our clients in general, but folks have connected that person (Moser) with that user ID," says PWCC Betsy Huigens.

Despite several inquires, PWCC would not disclose if Moser was the consigner of the 135 cards.

PWCC Betsy Huigens, however, did add, "It is worth mentioning that in our definition, a 'shill bid' is a bid placed in falsehood without intention of being honored. Shill bidding is something we monitor and manage carefully and we don’t have any experience of shill bidding as you describe tied to this person (Moser)."

The relationship between PWCC and Moser appears to span many years.