When a seller uses shills, they should probably try to be more subtle.

Russ

From $1 to way too much in record time.

Russ, NCNE

airplanenut

subtly shumutlty!

kranky

The bidder may be wacky, but I'm not convinced it's a shill.

In this auction's bid history (same seller), the bidder took over the high bid position with only 10 minutes to go, and didn't push the price up very much as I would have expected from a last-minute shill.

In this auction's bid history (again, same seller), well, I don't know what to make of that. Bidder won with a relatively late bid but only by $2.50.

The bidder also won another (non-coin) auction with a BIN, different seller.

Russ

Kranky,

The reason it looks like a shill to me is the multiple bids one right after another with no competition in between. I can't see any reason for that, since the seller stated the reserve right in the auction description. There's also a day between one round of bids, and the next.

Russ, NCNE

Dog97

Multiple bids one right after another with no competition in between simply means the bidder was trying to reach reserve or the other bidder's max a little at a time. Just because 2 newbies don't know how to bid & don't make a last second snipe doesn't mean they are shilling.

Russ

Dog,

As I said in the post right before yours, the seller stated the reserve amount right in the auction, and if he was trying to reach the other bidder's maximum, why did he keep bidding several times AFTER he did so?

Russ, NCNE

presleyh

Russ, i do that sometimes just to be goofy. Whenever somebody starts a thousand dollar item at 1.00, i bid fifty cents at a time just to watch my name up in lights. That may not be a shill bidder. example: item has opening bid 1.00, the first bidder bids 125.00, If i dont want to spend 125.00 I may bid a dollar at a time to see just where this guy stopped. so If I stop at 33.00 it would look like your bidder.

Neptune

It will be interesting to see how this one turns out.

This same person bid on the same sort of coins/dates from same seller just ten days ago (won auction for $157.50 - less than this one already). They did the same thing on this auction, bidding seven times.

LINK

If they are shilling, then they need to be busted. I know that eBay used to allow a certain amount of shilling a long time ago (or couldn't control it), but that didn't last long.

beartracks42

Two weeks ago, I bid on a NR auction on ebay for a raw EF/AU 1938-D Walker that looked pretty decent. I had bought from this seller before, so I made a first bid of $75. Within an hour or less, I got an outbid notice. This auction still had 4 or 5 days to go. The other bidder bid repeatedly until he had high bid at $75.56. The funny thing is; I forgot about the auction and when I looked at it again, the guy never bid again and the coin sold at $76.56 to someone else. Go figure!

Dog97

Russ, crysjendad was the first bidder then along comes camelotcards who makes 5 bids before he beats crysjendad's proxy. Then he bids 2 more times to reach reserve. Then crysjendad outbids camelotcards and they take a break until the next day when camelotcards makes 3 more attempts to beat crysjendad's new proxy before giving up. I don't actually know who reached reserve first or what the bids were because the bids aren't revealed until the auction ends.
Just because the reserve was $150 doesn't mean either bidder wanted to bid that right away, maybe camelotcards was just picking at crysjendad's bid trying to feel him out and may make a last second appearance as a sniper to regain the high bid and win the auction. Probably neither bidder actually read the descripition and knew what the reserve was.
OTOH both may be shills but neither has a history of bidding on any of dkenjockety's other auction in the past although camelotcards has bid on 3 proof sets this round of auctions but that does not prove shilling.