American Greed Series - Looks at Collectibles Fraud
MsMorrisine
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in the scope of cards, they discussed shill bidding about 20 minutes in.
"creating a false market"
"false sales prices influencing future sales prices"
" 'winner' paying more than if unshilled.
year 2017
season 11, episode 18
"Fraud Collectors"
Current maintainer of Stone's Master List of Favorite Websites // My BST transactions
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COMEX?
No Way Out: Stimulus and Money Printing Are the Only Path Left
Do any episodes address coins?
Thanks for the tip.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
Is this a series on TV? I was not aware of this... Of course, I rarely watch TV, but I could make special arrangements... Cheers, RickO
Yes, it is a show on CNBC. It's a super informative show because many of the culprits will only be incarcerated for a relatively short time. ...I wonder what kind of work they will go into after they are released..
Thank you.... and they will go right back into the same thing, only do it better... They learn from their mistakes. Cheers, Rick
Just watched the episode on Maestro Auctions concerning shill biding and fraud with baseball cards. Very interesting.
Successful BST transactions with lordmarcovan, Moldnut, erwindoc
Nuts
Double post
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
The potential exists in almost any auction; I attended a NY group that set up on a weekend at a VFW or similar hall venue. The auction guy had a Robin Leach sound alike voice and manner. They had Chagall and other famous artists prints, ornate gaudy, gilded looking stuff, bidding was brisk. How would you know the bids were real anyway? They can always recycle and run their stuff at another town venue looking for new suckers.
Has anyone searched for or found this episode available on any of the video streaming services? I checked Hulu, and they only have season 12 available.
I watched that episode on hulu a few days ago. I'm pretty sure all of the seasons were there but I don't use hulu enough to be able to guide you to the right place. I king of stumbled on it.
Successful BST transactions with lordmarcovan, Moldnut, erwindoc
Thanks so much @jafo50! I don't use streaming much so am not really familiar with the various interfaces. You are correct... it is available on Hulu. Only Season 12 was showing on the screen when I looked before, so I had to scroll down to allow the other seasons to show. I love that show ("American Greed"), so maybe would have stumbled on it like you at some point, maybe not...
so I really appreciate the info. I'm so excited I'm going to watch it immediately!!
American Greed is one of my favorite shows.
They do a really good job of explaining what happened and how some poor honest people lost their money by trusting someone they shouldn't.
Ends with the same lesson, "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is". This can apply to our hobby as well.
Here is a link to the episode on Vimeo.
https://vimeo.com/255495126
Yep, there is an episode about two brothers from Long Island that rip off customers in the early 2000's by selling overgraded coins. It is a good one.
This is nothing new in the coin market.
There are still coin auction houses today that have hidden reserves and you are bidding against a shill.
Coin doctoring is nothing new- fake sales/free buybacks happen all the time.
The biggest advice I can say is just bid the most you are willing to pay and thats it. Pretend each auction lot has a shill bid on it and you can either fight the shill or not.
Thanks for the info @NIPSZX. I found the episode on Hulu. It's season 9, episode 1 - "A Con Man's Deadly Revenge". It goes in a crazy direction. I highly recommend it!
That is a good episode, I think it moves from coin fraud to attempted murder when one of the brothers didn't want to pay his auto mechanic, so he put a hit out on him.
Scary stuff.