After my last contribution towards a legal discussion in a thread was censored by people who haven’t studied law, I’ve withdrawn from sharing an educated legal perspective. I’m not trying to offend anyone. We are all friends here on common grounds and my best wishes are sincere.
Save some for the rest of us
i guess the shill bidding was a low blow by eBay because there is really nothing you can do. it’s one of those things that can’t really be policed. it’s like saying US is ending diplomatic ties with a country because of corruption and nepotism. those are next to impossible to weed out.
and good point. ebay’s wording is super vague. that was definitely intentional to minimize likelihood of legal retaliation, but enough to spur a reaction from the public.
It’s pokedrama at the highest level
Shilling is also incredibly easy to not fall prey to as a buyer. It’s called using Gixen. Anyone who is manually placing bids on eBay is accepting the (entirely avoidable) risk that the auction will be shillled.
On another related topic, this is why Buy It Now will always be king. I completely understand that auctions generally (not always, but generally) yield the best deals, but if you just click “Buy It Now” on a card you want, you save the time and stress and get the bird in the hand without any funny business.
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t participated in auctions, but most of those auctions came within my first year or two back in the hobby (I re-entered in early 2017). I would say that at least 95 percent of my purchases since 2019 have all come via Buy It Now. You’ll probably end up paying more, but the difference is often negligible, especially when you take the time aspect into consideration.
What? This makes zero sense.
When you win an auction you pay one bid increment higher than the second highest bidder. I could have a max bid of $5000 on an item and if someone only bids $25, I’ll win it for $26 whether I use Gixen or not. If someone decides to throw in a $4500 shill bid (with zero intention of paying if they do win) and I then win the item for $4550, I’ve just been shill bid up to that level. Using Gixen can challenge the drip-drip-drip strategy of raising the price then retracting the last bid, but it doesn’t stop shill bidding.
Also, people placing bids to boost the price with zero intention of paying for the item doesn’t magically become shill bidding only when the shiller wins the auction. There’s certainly truth to the idea that your max bid should never exceed what you’re comfortable paying for the item, and it is a great way to minimize the impact of shill bidding. But it doesn’t make it disappear.
This is exactly what I’m referring to by “shill bidding.” I’m not referring to people generating artifically high (unpaid for) auction end prices so that an item they own appears more valuable. I’m referring to shills inflating the price of an item up to the current max bid on the item and then retracting their bid. It’s an extremely common form of shilling – and sniping makes you virtually immune to it. Perhaps I should’ve been more specific that this was the type of shilling I was referring to.
Wow – Goldin Auctions is acting quickly in trying to replace PWCC lol (not that PWCC needs to be replaced, of course). Will be curious to see how this works out. If anyone tries this out, I’d be curious to hear about the experience and what it offers that PWCC doesn’t.
(Tangentially related to the purpose of this thread, but I didn’t feel this warranted its own thread. If mods disagree, feel free to move or delete)
Well, isn’t the timing of this most curious. With all this bullishness for the collectible card market and collateral financing, makes one wonder what business relationships exist behind the realm of public knowledge.
Yep, I got the Goldin email like an hour after the original EBay email and the REA one like a few hours later lol They all smell blood
@pokecollectoramy, so Goldin either knew about the eBay PWCC announcement ahead of time or they’ve had this vault thing in the works for a while? Because otherwise Goldin wouldn’t have been able to send an email about their new vault only *an hour* after the original eBay email…it takes more time than that to develop something like that lol.
The Goldin Vault was announced at least a month ago, they were advertising free in person submissions leading up to the National in Chicago.
Oh, ok. I figured it was a brand-new thing because I hadn’t seen anyone mention it (on this forum or elsewhere).
Goldin website is still leagues behind PWCC website in terms of usability and aesthetic, I won’t use them until they remove their lame bidding cap and update the website so it looks 21st century.
lol. I know what you mean. On the other hand, coding newbies, still wet behind the ears, can make a nice looking site, but quality service is what’s needed. We’ll see how well Goldin adjusts; taking time to make a good play, or simply rushing haphazardly to capitalize…
Would anyone happen to know if this scandal affected Pokémon card listings specifically?
Not sure about “Pokémon cards” listings but”Pokémon” listings were well over 1 million and now it’s barely 900k.
There’s something to be said about PSA and Goldin being under the same ownership umbrella.
Steve Cohen’s history with eBay, both presently and before SAC got busted by The SEC is very interesting. His part in Collectors Holdings, numerous settlements and the recent gamestop squeeze are all very, very interesting.
But perhaps the most interesting part is how he, Sundheim and Turner control assets exceeding the GDP of many countries and how this whole ordeal is probably about something much bigger than PWCC, Pokemon, TCG’s or even collectibles all together.