US Mint And NH Banknotes From Ralph Orton Estate Cat $23,500

All the bidding since the $1100 level has come from three bidders new to the bidding and who bid at hugely increased intervals. The $1100 bidder was bidding from the start but seems to have dropped out at that level. But whether there's shill bidding going on and, if there is, whether the shilling was done to get it up to $1100 or to boost it way past $1100, I am not capable of analyzing.

Correction, the bidder with 153 feedbacks who was bidding from the start seems to have had a max of $1400, which is where the next (and new, with 4000 feedbacks) bidder surpassed him/her.

If I like a lot, but had concerns about potential return "issues" due to the US - UK element I would contact the seller BEFORE bidding. I would clarify where returns would be send to in the event of a problem. If that location would be costly for me I would ask the seller if he/she would be willing to pay the return cost to wherever that would be. If the seller refused I might get suspicious. Or I might just pass on the lot if I wasn't willing to eat the return shipping cost in the event of a problem.

So a buyer drops a couple of grand, and the seller ships a bunch of trash, and just walks away from one of the several hundred accounts he has with ebay.

The account was built using a prepaid VISA or MC with $50.00 on it; which also provided ebay with a savings account to be verified with. The seller used a 'Magic Jack' to get himself a random phone number with is different than where country/area code from where he lives. Then he setup a PO box or UPS/FedEx store to get a shipping address to use. Then adds more obfuscation by using an indirect shipping firm. And of course then uses some generic hotmail or gmail account for the contact email.

When you have a lot of accounts it isn't hard to believe that a seller would be willing to close it out to avoid paying a refund. Will the buyer get thousands of dollars back from eBay/PayPal? At best certainly not until they have had a long and protracted battle with eBay/PayPal and wait many months. I've had to fight with EBay/PayPal just to get them to refund much smaller amounts; they made me jump through all kinds of hoops.

And what legal recourse is there against the buyer? If anyone thinks for a second that they would be able to successfully bring a legal action across international laws without it costing them 3X-4X more than a domestic suit is dreaming. And that assumes that you can even identify who the buyer even is.

Everything comes down to relying upon eBay/PayPal vetting a new seller account correctly. The above is only one way to exploit this process, there are many, many other ways. And we have not even talked about the thriving industry of buying and selling of ebay accounts.

I guess if folks want to bank on eBay/PayPal vetting system of new accounts with thousands of dollars hanging in the balance it is their choice; but I don't have that kind of money to burn.
Don

Don, I have great respect for your experience. I've been with ebay since 1998, and I remember their system before they had any kind of buyer protection. In those days I used to send some payments as cash overseas to places in Germany. That's the only way some transactions could be done back then. And yes, I would get burned. I got burned once by a seller in Israel I had had good experience with until I sent him $1100 for a coin that he never sent (because he did not own one). No recourse. Another $450 to a kid in Florida for an "autographed" poster to which he had personally added the signatures. No recourse (and his mother was an attorney).

About the time ebay acquired Paypal all that changed for me. Now all my buying is through their checkout system and payment via Paypal. I do that precisely so I can stay within the constraints of their buyer protection program. Why? Because now it is eBay that is standing behind the sale. I have had easily a dozen cases of seller failure since ebay instituted the buyer protection system. In every case where I had to institute action I have won the outcome, and ebay has not failed to come through with a refund for all but the return shipping. The trick is to use the phone to follow up on a bum transaction, and make sure your concerns are being understood and will be met.


Believe me, I could drive myself nuts with worry about all the things that theoretically COULD go wrong, or how some other guy could cheat. Now I dismiss that and ask the hard question: do you know that this seller is engaging in the fraudulent practices you mention, or is this merely a list of possibilities?

If he's really a crook, let's nail him to the wall, but if he is merely suspicious and we are merely dubious, then the ebay structure ought to be able to help us with our purchases.

When I buy from a new ebay seller, for example, I will pay with PayPal - but not with my PayPal balance, rather the charge card I have tied to PayPal. This gives me a third layer of protection in case the buy goes bad. Personally, I'm comfortable with the protection given by the PayPal & ebay buyer protection programs, and as a buyer on ebay I have never lost a penny.

As an aside, earlier this year I purchased a few lots from one of the oldest, and well-known US stamp auction houses. One of the lots was SNAD. The house was not willing to make an adjustment. I paid them over $5,000 with a charge card. My dispute was for $500. I filed a dispute with my charge card company. It took a couple months of waiting, but in the end I got the $500 back. Sadly when disputes are filed it often takes time. As long as I get my money back in the end I can live with the wait.

Essayk,

I have first-hand experience with this seller. Make no mistake, he is a criminal.

Sinclair, I remember the troubles you had with this seller - it's amazing that he is still active.

With the current auction at almost $3500, it looks like for now a shill bidder has the high bid - a bidder with 110 feedbacks, showing a record of participating in 29 recent auctions, ALL with this same seller, and each time with the bids placed early, with 3 or 4 days remaining in each auction (allowing genuine bidders plenty of time to place their bids).

Lets hope, with just two hours until the auction ends, that the shill wins and we can watch for the stamps to be relisted, providing further proof of shill bidding.

I just love the description line, ".....useful for filling some gaps.....".

Terry

essayk,
First, it is better for me to not be specific at this time. I am trying to help folks avoid taking some of these risks. Please note that I am not proactively posting new threads shouting warnings or hurling accusations. Fellow hobbyists start a new thread calling attention to a listing and it prompts me to say 'take care'.

I will say that there IS a way to see the actual names of those who are bidding, it is an exploit in ebay's system (exploits work both ways sometimes). But if I publish it ebay will fix the bug and that will be that. But take my word for it, shill bidding goes on all the time. Some of these seller have accounts they use specifically for this purpose of shill bidding, they sell virtually nothing on them but buy tons of cheap (i.e. <$2.00) items to get lots of positive feedback. So as a 'buy only ' account they draw no attention from ebay on them.

But what makes this so frustrating is that ebay either doesn't want to help with some of these sellers or simply cannot due to the way they hide and dodge. (To be truthful the feeling I get is that they don't want to spend the time/money to chase them around internationally, it is simply cheaper to just ignore it and pay out the occasional claim when a buyer gets taken.)

ebay certainly could improve their new account process. But think about it, they would be making it harder to get a new account? That would cost them money. And do any of us think for a second that ebay is unaware that there are places all over the internet to buy and sell ebay accounts? It takes about 30 seconds to do a Google search on this. So the question is, why does ebay not take measures to prevent this? That would cost them money.

IMO ebay fraud group only deals with the lowest hanging fruit. Those simply, easy and low cost cases where they can quickly shut the seller down. But note we are not talking about a seller here who might allow some mis-described material cross his desk and claim ignorance. There are people who have large amounts of time to sit and figure out ways to really exploit the ebay system. To fix some of these exploits may take large amounts of resources and even require large changes to the way they do business. And do not discount the idea that some of the issues could even be corruption inside of ebay itself by a few individuals**.

Before ebay dissolved the oversight programs they had at least there was a mechanism where you felt you could get some attention put upon what appears to be horrid sellers. It could well be that they were only shutting them down only to have them pop back up under another name 2 weeks later. But at least they knew that ebay was indeed chasing them around and they could not operate without at least looking over their shoulders. Now it feels like they can do what they do with impunity. My guess is that ebay looked at the cost and effectiveness of doing this and said 'the heck with it' and has thrown in the towel.

I'll apologize if I am overstating these issues, if folks think that I am engaging in fear mongering, or if some think that I have some hidden agenda in the Stamp Smarter website***. I certainly do not want to alienate anyone by hijacking these threads and am certainly capable of keeping my mouth shut. My only intent is to help inform and educate.
Don


**Having spent a large part of my career in IS/IT I can tell you that it is a complete misconception to think that 'hackers' sit in their parents basement and break into remote systems. Far and away the easiest way to break into many of these system is to simply go get a job there or use another way to get physical access to the system.

***I am still giggling at the suggestion that I have spent hundreds of hours and my hard earned money (which I would far rather use to buy some more stamps!) to set up a site because I have some innate psychological need for 'empowerment'. I am getting old, I want to give something back to the hobby I love, I want the hobby I love to grow and thrive moving forward into the future.

Don is absolutely right and I stand behind every word je has written. I personally have contacted several layers of ebay Management about the fraudulent practices of some of this sellers, pleading with them to simply put me in contact with a LIVE person who can listen/read the accusations and the things we've documented, and consider doing something about it. And NONE of them respond. What few responses I've gotten over the last few months have been "generic" in nature, simply advising me to use the "Contact Us" function, speak to a rep., tell them my problem, and they will "take care of it". Indeed, as I've described here before, all that does is waste at least a half hour of my time, speaking to someone based in India, Pakistan or the Philippines, who, along with 800/1,000 others doing the same job, will indeed take the information, give me a "confirmation number".........then DO NOTHING! Other than this, they simply do not care.

And as much as I respect "Essayk" his logic of not worrying because your purchase is guaranteed by PayPal - indeed, that DOES work for anyone who has the ability to recognize that he's been taken. But many/most of the buyers of lots like this DO NOT know they've been taken. Lots like the one under discussion here are VERY deceptive. A lot like this will usually have a CORRECT Scott value much LESS than claimed by the seller, so that the actual percentage paid ends up being MUCH higher for the buyer than it appears it would be. Just a quick review of this lot shows me; #153 appears to have a tiny tear at top, discolored gum, facial soiling, the 30c actually appears to be a #190 and is, as others noted, reperfed, #160 is regummed, #217 is regummed, #218 appears to have thins at the lower let corner of the hinge, etc.

So bottom line, the PayPal guarantee is only good if you have the ability to realize you've been taken! And ebay seems not to care and seems to have abandoned anti-fraud work in the Stamps Category. BUYER BEWARE!

And another way to look at this is just because we might not personally be in danger because of the PayPal protection PLUS our own knowledge doesn't extrapolate to ignoring the danger for those among us with less skill and knowledge. And, as Don notes, that's what we hope to accomplish with StampSmarter - help those with less skill by building data bases of useful information about online sellers, good and bad.

And I was naive enough to believe all sellers were honest...lol

You can file that with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy...

Honest and knowledgeable is the goal.