How The Shill Works With Our British Friends

I've been working on this massive shill used by the Morgans to sell high end US Stamps. First, we use lots of usernames. Examples are:
mint-stamps, superdeal70, postage-dues, re-entry, stamp-store1, bargaindiscountstampsales85, rushmore_bargains, and others. They sell lots of low end stamps legitimately on ebay and establish good feedback. They list lots of high end stamps which appear to sell.

If you buy a high end stamp from them, they ask you NOT to provide ebay feedback. I think I understand now their reasoning. They use lots of shills to protect their bids. They are willing to pay ebay the listing fee so ebay gets their money and are happy as a clam.

Now, how can one tell if they are bidding against a legitimate bidder or a shill? I'm pretty sure, there is a way to tell unless the shill snipes, which usually they do not. Look at the list of bidders and click on the highest bidder. It will give you their bidding history. If they have zero feedback, they are a shill. It they have 100 feedback, they are a real bidder.

At this point today, all of the highest priced stamps with bids that are listed by one of these users above has a shill reserve. Check it out and see if you don't agree.

I'm sorry but that is ridiculous.

Shill or not, one establishes a fair price for an item and then pays no more than that amount. It's really quite simple. (To me at least.)

used stamps and used coins do not look alike from one to the next because of wear on coins and cancels/centering on stamps. unless you see them keep relisting the same item after it sold you can never be sure but what it really comes down to is with all the items out there for sale if you dont feel comfortable with a seller dont bid on that sellers items.

If these are real user names, I would be very careful what you post in public without concrete iron clad proof. Sellers and/or buyers do not appreciate it.

Especially since it's 100% impossible to prove from where we sit. It's difficult at best to prove even from ebay's seat.

This post was based on facts, not suppositions. ebay has promised a safe venue without shill bidding. They offer reserves to protect sellers. If items are listed without reserves, buyers expect a fair playing field. Of course every buyer must set limits. If you are a newby or buying less expensive items, this issue will not affect you. It only pertains to buyers using ebay to obtain high end stamps. I myself am an extensive ebay buyer and seller with over two thousand positive feedbacks in 16 years. I'm not exactly sure how this entire shill works, but it's clearly a very clever shill. If you do buy expensive stamps on ebay, read my first post and you can see how to protect yourself.

You completely contradicted yourself in the same sentence. You don't know how it works, but it's clear.


Give me even the slightest bit of PROOF and I'll shut up.

Where you a shill bidder when you registered or did ebay let you start at 100?

If you are an ebay buyer with extensive experience then surely you don't do anything but sniping at a fixed price determined by the value you have assessed for the item. If not you are a sucker for shills. If you do this then shilling doesn't matter. The key to not getting ripped off by shill bidding is to bid once your max price in the last 3 seconds of the auction.

Of course, if a seller is shill bidding then you can be pretty certain they may be falsely representing their items and look out for clean cancels, reperfs, hidden repairs, etc.

Sadly, it is almost impossible to positively identify shill bidding on ebay - no different from a live auction. I also have to drop a "ridiculous" on your "shill identifier" theory. It's simply absurd. Feedback and shill bidding have no relationship whatsoever.

I recently participated in an ebay auction where I put up my highest bid and let it go. I was the only bidder until the closing hour of the listing. In a span of about 15 minutes, a single bidder placed bids in one-dollar increments but screwed up and went one too many and I became the undebidder. Oh well... But wait! Two days later, I get a "Second Chance Offer" to buy at my high bid as the winner failed to pay! I pointed out that if the one other bidder was bogus, the starting bid should be what I pay. Seller did not respond back, so I reported both the seller and the bidder to ebay as shills. Neither is currently registered. HMMMM.....

I do agree with your "shill reserve" theory though. It is cheaper to shill up to a reserve price than it is to set a legitimate reserv on an auction, which is stupid. Frankly speaking, any ebay seller who sets a reserve is an idiot, and I never do business with them. Set your starting bid point for the lowest acceptable price and let the market dictate the sale. That, or establish a Buy-It-Now listing!

I've studied this phenomenon extensively in both the coin and stamp areas of ebay, and in fact wrote a white paper on the intricacies of shill bidding that is unpublished. Shill bidding and shill accounts can both be detected based on patterns of repeated behaviors by both the seller and by the shill accounts they use, however one cannot be 100% accurate.

Never rely on what you see happening in one auction or the ratings of the bidders as your foundation for determining if a seller is shilling. Study their patterns over multiple auctions.

While I agree with the point that detecting shill bidding is difficult and almost never beyond a 'reasonable doubt', the truth is that ebay does look the other way by allowing s a seller to start with a purchased existing account. I won't post any links to those who sell existing ebay accounts but folks can search for them themselves to verify.

Why ebay allows this to occur is beyond me, it is a disservice to those sellers who work hard on maintaining a good rating. It also undermines the value of the Feedback system.

One thing can certainly be said about the sellers identified in the first post, material moves between them all the time and this is easily documented. Many listings are shown as sold but then are relisted under the same name or one of the other names. It is not uncommon to see the same material listed and sold 3 or 4 times under these seller names. All the listings are shown shipping from US locations yet sellers is shown as being in Great Britain.

While this isn't undisputable proof of shill bidding it is, in my opinion, cause for concern. If these listings were for inexpensive material my concern would not be very high, but these listing are always for higher dollar material.

I think that ebay needs to vet their accounts better and look into putting checks and balances in place that limits the number of accounts a seller can have. A seller can certainly have good reasons to have more than one account but what legitimate reasons are there for a seller to have 30-40 accounts? What legitimate reasons are there for a seller to buy an existing account with a Top Seller rating and high feedback?
Don

OK....Now I got it.

It is ok to steal $1. 1000x
but not ok to steal $1000 1x

Kevin,
It appears you misunderstood my post; it did not say that I would have no concern(s), it said my concern would not be very high. I am unclear as to how you can come to the conclusion that this means it is 'ok to steal' at any level.

That may very well be the dumbest thing ever posted on this forum.

Now, if you want to extend the above the statement to read:

"If they have zero feedback and have 80-100% of their bidding history across 10+ items with the same seller, they are likely a shill."

Then I might agree.

Don (51Studebaker) Thank you for posting. Most of the folks posting here have no idea what I'm talking about. Some seem to think shill bidding is acceptable. Others think it's all imaginary. I think ebay is looking the other way because they are getting handsome selling fees for stamps that really don't sell. I personally am not really affected. I always snipe, I'm knowledgeable in prices, and I'm very careful. Many others on ebay have more money than experience and common sense and get burned.