Ebay Bidder

The info in the image below speaks for itself. Please be aware and mindful when you bid with this seller.

My bid activity would be similar with several dealers who are my favorites. There are 8 different bidders on that auction and nothing looks fishy to me. That particular bidder bid $14 and I'm not sure why a $14 bid on a $136 catalog value item should raise any eyebrows It's possible that some bidders lowball every auction in the hopes of sometimes winning.

The fact that you bid with SEVERAL dealers means the % of bids placed with them would be no more than say 20-35% or so, at the very most. 18,824 bids all placed with the same seller and a rating of 109, not to mention 3.5 bids average per lot (and thus NOT lowballing) is open and shut... period.

A bid of 10% of catalog price causes suspicions of what exactly? Surely if there was any wrongdoing, the bid amount would be much higher.

P.S.

If you think about the numbers it makes much more sense to bid, in the situation illustrated above, moderately. If each of those bids increased the final lot value by $1:

$18,824 in one month x 12 months = $225,888 annually in additional revenue. Just because the seller is very smart doesn't mean it's not happening or that it's right.

I don't see an issue. At my peak, I would bid on ~200 items a week from the same seller and win not more than 1-5 items. My game is to bid no more than 5% catalogue on any lot in the hopes of scoring a bargain. I have purchased nearly 1000 lots over the past several years and at my peak, I would be bidding on 15,000 lots a year. I have even purchased lots for a penny doing it this way ...

Brian

That amount of bids all with one seller does look fishy, but I do suspect that there are some buyers who take a "shotgun" approach and just lowball a ton of different items just to see how many bargains they can get. A spot check of this seller shows they have several hunred recent sold items at under $2, so this strategy would definitely score some deals with this seller, assuming you weren't picky about what it was you just won for a buck or two. Just playing devil's advocate, it could also be someone who consigned a collection to the seller as well, bidding up their own items. I'll repeat that it DOES look fishy, but there are other ways this could happen.

I hate to assume what someone else is thinking, but I think Shermae is speculating this bidder is a shill for the seller. The data for the past 30 days indicates this bidder bid almost 20K times on approx. 5000 items offered by only one seller. More specifically, this bidder has placed roughly 26 bids per hour for a single seller.

It does seem rather odd...actually for me it is a big red flag.

There are two goals with every ebay transaction.
For the seller it is to get the most money possible.
For the buyer it is to spend the least money possible.

Multiple bids are simply the norm!

Owsi you very much have the gist of what I am saying. And I really like how you've positioned your opinion based on analyzing the numbers. I totally missed how that broke down in bids/unit of time.

In any case, I'm sharing and suggesting people be careful. :-)

shermae.... how about sharing the link to the listing where this
bidder appears so we can examine it, too...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/nystamps-Po...047675.l2557

I would be very suspicous too, but honestly that auction you showed didn't strike me as any kind of shill bidding. Only one bid for $14.

The point is that one bid is all it takes. This bidder's history shows thousands of bids with the same seller. All this bidder needs to do is a single bid per auction to bump the price up just a little bit. Over thousands of auctions, such a practice would earn the seller thousands of dollars. That's what appears to be occurring. So with this seller, and this bidder present, you can never get the lowest price that you should. You're always feeding them just a bit more.

I think it's obvious that I***e is a shill for NYStamps.
It's perfectly legal.
It replaces the Reserve amount that we don't see much of any more.
They didn't need the insurance ($14) this time because there was plenty of bidding and the item was stalked by 3 snipers, one of whom got off 2 bids within 2 seconds. He must have had two windows open. (Tricky... but in vain)
Shermae was alert to spot the shill (and ebay certainly needs more lerts ;)
Caveat emptor (et sapiens emptor!)

It's fascinating how people see this issue from many different angles. When "The Ring" was prosecuted in the 1990's, it was certainly felt by the Feds at that time that collusion and shill bidding were illegal. CJPalermo could best speak to that in our group.

In the end, we all benefit from knowing who shills and who doesn't. In what way is knowledge detrimental to philately?