Ebay Question About Auctions Being Bid Up?

Hello everybody. Yes, first post is a question lol.

Been on ebay a loooooong time buying stamps and more recently selling small time. Gives me something detail oriented to do since I retired. Before retirement I took a very long time off and moved to other hobbies.

Question: I see a certain pattern lately that i'm not too sure about. Never noticed it on singles and small lots maybe because I never really cared that much $$ wise but the last few days i'm seeing users with zero feedback or single digit feedback bidding up some of the larger US accumulations. As in a user with 5 feedbacks on small items suddenly bids up an accumulation or collection far past the clouds and into space.

Now don't get me wrong, as we all started with zero feedback or history. This is not a sour grapes cry I lost the lot of a lifetime ebay is evil blah blah but it just seems fishy with 2 LARGE stamp dealers having lots bid up in the last minutes like a feeding frenzy from people with near to zero feedback.

A better question might be is to ask if that is quite common these days.

Am I seeing something where there's nothing?

Are these profiles with small buys and newer profiles somehow shills? Only to show when a lot looks well, well under bid?

Just looking for opinions from the fine group of ladies and gents here. Thanks in advance and fwiw I think i'll hang around. Seems like a lot of good folk here.

Welcome Ink,
probably best to always offer a link, so we can see the details.
Generally, if it feels bad, it is bad, tally forth with caution.
If they show "private bidders", I immediately go elsewhere.

For sellers running up bids on your own lots has always been a problem . You have to decide what are your limits and stop there.Never chase a price upward with a bidder who comes in right after you bid .

Low feedback or zero feedback accounts that act in that manner would seem to bear some scrutiny. Accounts with a great deal of feedback can be utilized in the same way given that there is a trade in established ebay IDs. Buyers should be aware that being bid up by either type of account, high or low feedback, if it follows a pattern of benefiting the seller, is something to watch for. Traditional auction houses have their own set of issues when it comes to bidding. Trust and having a relationship with a seller that you know and visa versa is a good thing if you are going to spend any appreciable amount of your hard earned dollars.

There is another side to this issue. I have occasionally seen this type of bidding on my own auctions and sometimes it works out but more often than not these low feedback aggressive bidders don't pay ad I get stuck.
Then when I try and resell the items bidders get suspicious and I can't use 2nd Chance offers because the 1st round of bidding was bogus. It's a real problem for me.

Revenge or malicious bidding was/is always an issue without proper vetting of accounts (which would be quite costly for ebay). This is an area in which the APS Store could hold an significant advantage, the APS has 'membership' as leverage to settle transactional disputes.
Don

Would you like to offer who the LARGE dealers are?

Dutchman, i'm pretty new here after just lurking for a while and wasn't sure of proper etiquette with regards to naming dealers in what sounds like an accusatory way. The dealers haven't done anything wrong to me so i'm leaving the names off. Just seemed odd for small feedback bidders to jump in and bid stuff up like I've seen recently and was curious if it was just me being paranoid.

Maybe a better question is, is it common for low feedback folks to jump into high (imho) priced sets or collections like that? Do sellers see that and go "uh oh, here's another one."

A tiny bit more bkgd from my perspective: I'm a member of a firearms forum that tracks buyers and sellers based on transaction feedback between both so that people with plenty of negatives can be seen and sellers don't have to sell to them. In general and in my experience, the low single digit/no feedback people are the tire kickers, have 50 questions about unimportant stuff related to the sale, agree to meet for a sale and then are the ones who flake, show up but want a discount, extras etc. Basically trouble.

Floortrader, that is exactly what I did. Saw it and thought, 'well it's not my problem now. Too rich for my blood."

KRelyea lol. I thought of that exact scenario. "Am I going to get a second chance offer on this one?" At the same time I have my max outlay set and usually drop out when I see 2 bidders going head to head so am usually way down the pecking order when things get crazy. There will be other auctions.

Thanks for the replies people. Your knowledge on all things philatelic is mind boggling. I do appreciate the replies very much.

Stamp people on a whole are very smart, switched on and experienced with the ways of stamps & ebay. Even the low feedback people buying stamps seem to know something about the stamp world.

Am comparing stamp people to people buying our plants on ebay. Maybe 1 in 4 Plant buyers have a tendency to think they are horticulture experts when they are not even close. Some of their drivel makes them look really bad. It is very sad when the buyer truly thinks wrongly on how to grow that plant etc. "You can lead a horse to water but you can not make it drink."

Finding that it is needed to educate the plant buyer in the process of buying. Downside it creates a lot of extra work. The description area on our listings is a great way to try and educate the buyer before purchase. Have a lot more work to do in this area of our listings.

There is no question that sellers bid against genuine bidders to boost the price.

So what? Bid your maximum, don't get sucked into the competition and use a sniping program so that the seller isn't aware of your interest until the last seconds.

You simply cannot control this activity in a place like ebay. Know your product, bid what you feel is a fair price and move on from lots you don't win.

If I misseed out on an item and received a second chance offer for the item described, I'd offer far less than my bid to a seller so brazen.