Help please. I bid on several cards last night (EBAY) and lost everytime..
olb31
Posts: 2,939 ✭✭✭✭✭
with one of the big boys, won't mention names. They were all for the same set I collect, the 1978 OPC. The ones I bid, the next bidder won, of course. The ones I didn't bid on sold for $15, $20, $23, for PSA 10's. Anyway, I looked to see who beat me because I've been been number 1 on the registry for 7 years, and no one below ever adds anything. So, while looking at the auction results it shows something like this u****1 (3753). What I found interesting was on several of the winners of these auctions the name part was different, but the (3753) was the same. When opened up each of these to examine closer, the name on all threw was S****8 (3753), but when you just view the winner all three had different names, but they turned out to be the same person. How does this happen? Confused. Thanks for any commentary you can provide.
Comments
eBay started randomizing their "anonymous" IDs a few weeks (maybe a month or so?) back. The only way to correlate now is the feedback number, which isn't necessarily unique.
This has gone on for a while it’s something you probably need to get used to.Personally I do not like it. This makes it hard to catch shilling.
unless they had multiple snipes set up that were higher than your bid.
Snipes = this is the lowest I will sale this for bid.
Bid higher, if you chose to bid as high as you are willing to go, and you didn't win, be happy.
Or bid higher.
Drink more alcohol when you bid. You will bid higher and win more.
That works for me. Not necessarily with the wife.
Gee, I can't imagine why Ebay would make a change that makes it harder to catch shilling.
Big name players, is iffy at best imo, because there's many a shill bidder on eBay. I typically stick to low level guys and seek out bigger names locally at shops and shows which gives me a chance to haggle directly. When dealers/sellers are that close and smell money, they tend to bend a little.
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In all honesty this does not sound like shill bidding but someone who is collecting the set and bid higher. The purpose of shill bidding is to get to your max not to actually win. Guess you will know if you see these listed again.
I know of a set collector working on all the OPC sets. If he needs the card, he will win it most likely. He does not have any of his sets listed in the Registry
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All three that I lost was by $1 to the same guy. Sounds like shill bidding to me. I am #1 in the registry. The other 10's I didn't bid on went $15, $20 and $23. The price only went up when I bid on them and then someone beat me.
Thanks Tom. Kind of takes the fun out of the competition the registry brings. In fact, the registry kind of drives a lot of the card issues. Without it, I think you are getting PSA Cards for near BVG levels. Maybe he beat me or maybe the guy who consigned beat me, who knows. I know that I have not been able to update hardly any cards in the set for a number of years. And usually all the cards I need are auctioned by the big fellows, 4 SC doesn't even have them. The last time they did, the cards I needed where on the 4SC website for about a year before someone else bought them.
You don't understand shill bidding. Sounds like you might not understand how ebay works. When you get outbid by one bidder it's always by a single bidding increment.
When you enter a bid and the numbers go up and you are second to high bidder, that means you haven't bid high enough to outbid the other bidders high bid. The bid amount doesn't go up until you bid.
I think you might be confused on what a snipe is, too. A snipe is just simply a bid placed automatically by a third-party service at the auction's last moment. It isn't necessarily the bidder's lowest amount they're willing to pay. They could have a snipe set for $100 but if the next bidder is only at $17 then they're going to win the auction for $18.
Arthur
Like joe mentioned, You can bid one million dollars on the items and your final price will only be one dollar more than the 2nd highest bidder. As someone said earlier just put in the highest price you are willing to pay. Do it with 4 or 5 seconds to go in the auction and forget about it.
With regards to the person possibly being the same person, maybe they have the same interests you have and are shopping the same items? I kept getting beat by this one guy a couple of years back when bidding on Various Rickey Henderson psa 10’s. He wanted them more than me because I always just put in the highest I would pay.
To me what is described here would be similar to creating a reserve price in an auction that does not allow it (if we assume the winner was the owner of the cards which I am not sure is the case).
Setting up a single snipe ensures the card will not go for lower than a price that they are not willing to sell it for. This is improper because 1) it artificially raises the price of the winner if this bidder is in second place 2) it gets the eyes of the bigger auction house that may not be there for a buy it now or a reserve auction 3) it is dishonest
However, I don’t see why putting in an unrealistic snipe is that beneficial to the seller. In this case they would have to pay the fees to the consignment house to rebuy their own card. If they listed it as a buy it now they would have had the same result - still having the card and an eBay fee. If they list the card at a reserve auction same deal reserve not met so they have the card and paid the listing fees. You could say it was an unsuccessful shill as the OP did not pay a penny more for the card than they would have because they did not win. I would think putting a snipe it at an unrealistic price (as evidenced by winning all the auctions the OP bid on) rarely works to get more money for the card and usually results in no sale. If the person was the underbidder in all these auctions that the OP won then I think it would have been successful shilling (sniping at just at or under the expected market price and pushing the bidder up to market).
When somebody repeatedly bids (chip bids) it is much more damaging to me because they are making someone pay more than they would without the risk of not selling the card. EBay will raise it up in increments until it is obvious you hit the bidders max. Avoiding this is the main advantage of using snipes.
Maybe the winner was the owner of the cards and maybe they were someone who wanted them for their set. I am guessing it is the latter in this case.
I hate shilling and know it has cost me $ over the years. However I bid what I am willing to pay and am not disappointed when I win at that price.
Great post brad31!
I once "won" an auction when someone "chipped" in 2 dollar increments up to, and then surpassing, my highest bid and then retracted his/her bid saying they had made a "mistake" in bidding.
I ended up the winner after I had received an outbid notice. I did honor my (foolishly high) bid and complete the purchase, only to find that, to add insult to injury, the item was rejected by PSA as "questionable authenticity"!!!!!!!!
From that point on, I decided to use a sniping service. I bid what I am willing to pay and then forget about it. Makes for a much less stressful hobby.
Bid retractions should NEVER be allowed! Especially if the retractor becomes the high bidder.
At the very least, if you retract a bid all of your other bids for that auction should be cancelled as well.
Agree retraction should not be allowed. If a bid is retracted a 30 day suspension from EBay is in order. If a second time within a year user should be get a 6 month suspension.
To me there are two acceptable reasons for a retraction:
An honest typo - meant to bid $100 and I bid $1000 or subsequent evidence shows the item is not legitimate. I have never retracted a bid and cannot see any other reason I would.
Unfortunately bans would just result in new EBay user IDs and the same thing. Minimum feedback should be allowed to be required on auctions (maybe it is - not really a seller so do not know). If someone needs to build feedback let them do some buy it nows to establish legitimacy.
someone is chasing you.....
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I recently found out that pulling best offers counts as a bid retraction. Which, I suppose makes perfect sense when you get right down to it, but is in a totally different ballpark from people making cutesy games with live auctions and retracting bids in those.
When I send a best offer, I give the seller a day at most. If I haven't heard back from them I pull the offer and pursue a different example. Perhaps I'm impatient or whatever but I'm not a fan of tying up a large chunk of money while I wait for some dipshart seller to play games only to find out that they don't even respond and it just expires after 48 hours. So if that means I have a lot of bid retractions on my account, so be it.
Arthur
Had not realized that on Best Offer. You can now limit your offer to a 12 or 24 hour window. I always limit mine for the reasons you state. I do it consider retracting a best offer the same as an auction bid retraction.