New trick or old one?

Copyboy1

Here's something I've noticed in the football market on Ebay the past few months.

• Card X goes up for auction. The previous high was $250.
• A number of people bid on the card, but last-minute bidding drives it up to $475.
• Two days later, 2-4 of the same cards go up BIN at $465.

Now, it COULD be people see the high sales price and decide to sell too, but unlikely. It's not shill bidding exactly. But it certainly doesn't seem legit.

Anyone else notice this? A new trick or an old one?

dictoresno

this is what propelled the 2011 Topps Update Trout way up. They were sitting at like $330-400 for awhile. There was supposedly one seller who either consigned or auctioned off like 10 of them at a time and they all went for $800+. this kinda set the new comp/bar for these cards and people sometimes live and die by the ebay comp. from then on, the comps kept going up and people keep selling for more and more. people see a huge jump, so they sell and people FOMO buy at those prices, embedding the comp as standard. so its kinda easy to manipulate the prices as this person did.

ive sold cards when I see they are hot, its no different than any other market item that can be the flavor of the week. but all it takes is a few sales of a certain cards to possibly misrepresent "comps" and make people start adjusting BIN prices accordingly, even if proper auction prices may not reflect that.

mtcards

Not sure of the listings because I didnt see them, but I have seen certain insert sets with shady bids, then followed by high BIN listings. It is definitely happening in the Pokemon card segment on ebay, so it happening in other areas of collectibles would not be surprising