Shill Sunday

Same as it always was, same as it always was.

Shilling, even on ebay, is a Federal crime.  The only time I've seen people go to jail for it was over in a vintage baseball card forum.  The owner of the forum, and those who were consigning with the shillers, beat up anyone who opened their mouths to complain.  But eventually the FBI got involved and the ebay sellers actually went to jail.  But ebay will not do anything about it except under extreme duress.  And why should they?  If a bidder pays $1,600 for a $500 pipe that has been shilled, then he's an idiot and doesn't care, ebay gets more money, the consignor gets more money.  Everyone's happy.  I don't really care either, as I won't bid on auctions run by the three sellers who were raking it in (as they always do) this morning.   It's the hypocrisy among forum members that is hard to ignore.  When a forum member asked which ebay sellers were the best to buy from, no one mentioned a single honest seller - but they mentioned all three of the shillers.  That kind of eats at me.


The last time I brought this up (in another forum), I was told that I would only make other forum members angry by pushing the issue.  If you do the simple bid history research I did this morning, you'll see why I was told to shut up.

I personally would not be offended if someone simply shared their findings, as a forum member, flaming wars are never productive… people need to weigh it for themselves and move on.

The flame wars started over in the card forum, when people's income was in danger of being negatively impacted by those of us who wanted a level (and legal) playing field.  There are plenty of people here who are in a similar boat, and who will argue that we're just complaining that things are selling for higher than what we want to pay.  The Feds weren't impressed with such logic.

I intentionally did not call anyone out; however, I gave you instructions.  Here they are step-by-step.  At this point you may need to look at 'completed auctions'.

1) log in to ebay
2) go to pipe auctions
3) sort by 'highest first'
4) look at bidding history
5) ignore what you see

Goodbye.

I looked at the pipes today and honestly, there wasn't anything I wanted. Having too many pipes cures PAD! 😁

For the benefit of other readers of this thread I will share some info. First, I was in the retail camera business from around 2000 until 2010, when digital tech changed that business and I moved on. I sold used equipment on eBay all of those years and averaged $300K + per year in gross sales. I know a bit about eBay.

Second, shill bidding is when a seller bids on their own items through a friend or false name. It’s really only a crime that works when they are trying to drive up market prices, not an individual item. The goal is to have the seller create high sales that don’t actually happen.

eBay’s algorithm searches for connections between buyer/seller for repeat auctions that are won and then not completed

Bidding on your own item to drive up the price doesn’t actually work, since there needs to be a real buyer who already bid more or they haven’t actually sold it. It has the same effect as placing a reserve on the item, so anyone doing that is only fooling themselves.

Finally, I had an experience a few years ago selling a pipe on eBay where a bidder accused me of bidding up the price, which I didn’t and never have. It was a cased, unsmoked Dunhill large gourd calabash. The guy who accused me was winning it at around $1,200, but at the end, three more bidders jumped in and it sold for over $3,000. Since I was accused, I researched the other bidders. They were all people bidding high on things they obviously wanted and could afford to.

When people don’t understand what they are seeing or can’t think of what else might be happening, it is not proof of anything they fabricate as an answer.

Pipestud is exactly who I was thinking of.

'Shill bidding' is the actual term used by the Department of Justice in official documents concerning auction house activity.

The English language is always evolving.  Could be 100 years ago when such things were going on, they referred to auction house shenanigans as Zach says.  We constantly use words in ways they weren't originally designed, and that's fine.

I had drinks with a guy a few days before he had to report to prison for shill bidding activities at an auction house he worked for.  It was sad.  He was a nice guy, but nice guys go to prison too.

Well, there was no interest in the illegal activities going on, other than the one guy who was defending the sellers, so we might as well talk about the evolution of English.

I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

I haven't argued with anyone.  One of your members created a straw man and I assume he's still arguing with him.

As far as: "It's an auction. You bid as much as you want and maybe you win."  I think I made myself clear that I'm referring to auctions that are being illegally shill-bid.  That creates an artificially high end result - not for each instance, but for enough to where the buyers are paying more than they should have.  It sounds like you are fine with that, and I assume most everyone else here is as well, as there have only been opinions that dissented with mine.  

Sad.

Lost another one. Sigh.