Trans-Miss $1 From The Cartel?

Another cartel posting I presume.

But this has a cert.

How risky is it go for it?

Perfs are too suspicious and gum side is tad too clean.

Never seen a perfect $1 till date.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/272435555030

I've never seen a perfect one either, so I wouldn't be inclined to buy something like that. However, I suppose I'm by no means an expert in classical United States so I wouldn't be one to give a justifiable consensus.

Yes it is a cartel listing.
Putting the stamp condition aside, if you bid he will simply bid against you until he gets the price he wants (he has 40-50 accounts). Additionally, you will be supporting a person who certainly is not helping the hobby.
Don

Never heard of this. Can someone explain what a cartel listing is, please?

Dave,
Try searching on British Cartel in this forum or even on Google. be prepared to spend several hours going through the info.
Don

P.S. Here are a few example listings from the same seller (different seller name)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Mint-NH-...AOSwLnBX94Fq

http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Mint-NH-...AOSwXeJYCe-H


http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Mint-NH-...AOSwt7ZXpOyI


http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Mint-NH-...AOSwknJX1qs1

To be fair, it is possible that these were all legitimate sales and the buyers backed out each time. (Yeah right.) If you watch closely the same material will show up under his other names.

Don, I've been curious about this for a while, and maybe you can answer it for me: How lucrative can the cartel's practice of shill bidding be for them? That is, how much more are they making than if they listed their stamps (problematic though they may be) and let genuine bidding determine the winning amount? Do people really get that caught up in competing bids (even unknowingly against a shill) that they're willing to go that much higher?

Please don't take this as my attempt to act as their apologist. I am not. It just seems strange to me that they would invest such resources into shill bidding that it must make fiscal sense for them to keep it up.

Other examples having a condition equivalent to this cartel item appear regularly in the open market, though usually at better dealers or auction houses. I would not consider the condition inherently suspicious.

E.g., http://www.century-stamps.com/Catal...328/1171.jpg

On the other issues raised thus far, I agree with Don.

Chris

Of course if you want this stamp you may be able to ask the person who 'purchased' it a few weeks ago...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Trans-Mi...047675.l2557

If you don't win this time just wait and bid again in a week or two.

But seriously, why would anyone even bid on a high-end stamp that gets sold, relisted, sold, relisted, sold relisted? If you assume the seller is 100% legitimate then a likely alternative is that there is something going on with the stamp and the buyers rejected it.

Edit;
lest there be any question that this might be two different sellers..

Look at the image properties from the first sale a few weeks ago under the seller name 'best-low-prices'



Now compare to this week's listing under the seller name 'collect04'


Draw your own conclusions.

DenimDan, Greetings:

You will hear a lot about the difficulty of keeping your cool during competitive bidding, as well as strategies to help avoid losing your cooling ('sniping').

But I think that there are two other processes at work.

One is the "logic of the increment". If you were willing to spend U$D 50, and bid U$D 50, and get outbid, why would you not say "okay, its just one increment more" and raise your bid?

Rinse and repeat, and you're passing U$D 90 before you know it, because the logic remains logical: if you were willing to pay X, why not pay X+increment?

The second process is that we are all "price takers". No matter what magnificently-informed exhaustively-researched coolly-reasoned price you've set for an item, the data that fed that decision came from the market, eg, what people paid in the past.

So when you bid your max, and get outbid, the logical thing to do is to accept this new data from the marketplace, adjust your estimate of the value of the stamp northwards, and raise your bid. Rinse and repeat ...

Mind you, these are both 'logical' processes, and do not begin to address the thrill of the chase, swatting down the other bidder, etc.

Be careful out there.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Do not discount the value of pumping up one's sales numbers. One possible reason might to be to go public or otherwise sell shares in the company. Another reason could be the possible sale of the entire company. A seller could also cancel many of the sales; constant cancelling might eventually cause an ebay black eye but there are plenty of other names to switch to. And lastly it might be that the fees are simply considered the 'cost of doing business' and in the big picture it still is profitable.

DenimDan: The last "winning" bid on this item was $1925, which means that the highest bid from a real bidder was something less (if you look at the bid history it might have been as low as $550). It also means that he (the cartel is one person) wants more for it. This stamp is graded 80. SMQ is $3500. PSE's population report for this stamp in this condition at this grade shows 6 data points since 2005. The prices range from about $2300 to $2860. Clearly collect04 would not get nearly this much by relying on ordinary bidding, so he apparently does consider whatever resources he expends on this game to be worth it. Note that Siegel sold an example graded at 98 in April for $62,500.

As an inexperienced ebay seller (I have won auctions but never sold anything on ebay) doesn't the "cartel" have to pay a fee when the stamp sells. So if he shill bids under another name, and wins as done with the 1$ trans, doesn't he have to pay 10 percent to ebay (about 200$)? Isn't this risky?

And if anyone still harbors any doubt check out his/her own purchases and you will see many UK sellers, i.e. New York is doubtful as the home.

Hello Don..

I aint bidding with them anymore. Had a brush up with them once in the past...

Question is on the condition of the stamp... looks too good... The perfs and condition are too perfect. The cert ain't saying reperf or regummed..

May be my experience with them, makes me suspect even a genuine stamp

I would say the cert is what it is. With this seller (in all his guises) it isn't necessarily the genuineness of the items up for sale that is in question (though there have been issues there as well). It is the fact that the auction is rigged.

The grading mania is getting out of control.. $63K for GR98 ? This stamp will still be awesome at GR70