Hi E4,
I noticed some potential shill bidding activity by 1 new account bidder in an auction of mine listed by my Consignee (Probstein123). I have reached out to Probstein123 about this and asked if they are able to remove this person’s bids.
May I ask if there is anything else that can be done? Also would you be aware if Probstein123 generally takes action to remove the bids on upon these requests?
Thanks all for the experience sharing
What makes you say shill bid?
New Ebay accounts are created all the time, people have to start somewhere.
What is the cards value?
You are right - this is just my suspicion. I wish to err on the side of caution and not waste time, because it will take another 10 days likely if this card is to be relisted. I also have some payments due this month.
Is it possible that it is a legit buyer who happened to just have created a new account? This is possible. It looks a bit suspicious however, since that account has 0 feedback and 10 bids since account creation, all on the same (my) listing.
There is also a BIN listing available slightly below the current auction price (within 50 bucks USD).
There are various ways shill bidding happens, the seller can sometimes create or get a ‘‘Friend’’ to push up the price in hopes a bid war will begin so someone who wants it has to spend more than they want to happened to me alot, or the same thing but where someone pushes up the price for the same reason.
@fiery, I am the consignor and Probstein123 is the consignee (i.e. the middleman).
The current auction price is a bit above USD2000. What I meant in my last sentence is that there is a BIN listing fixed at USD2000 but it has not been bought out.
Yeah sorry I got the wordings reversed and misread.
Then it would be suspicious indeed. I think contacting him (which you did) would be your best shot. Best of luck!
sorry to break it to you, Probstein is low-key known for having higher prices than others in auctions, especially in sports card world.
I recommend just waiting it out, and seeing if the buyer pays.
He is also known for shilling amongst other things as well. Never had experience with him so i dont know myself. but his reputation certainly proceeds him.
Funny enough… I wake up and check the BIN listing and it has been bought out.
Probstein has quite the reputation in vintage baseball for having several shill accounts to bid up their auctions. It’s a fairly open fact within the pre-war community.
Accept it as part of the transaction, and decide if you wish to take further business to them. Really all you can do.
Bold claim. Evidence?
I don’t know anything about this person, but shilling is fairly obvious by checking multiple auctions under the same seller. Look at the bidding patterns for timing, account feedback, and compare with other auctions for same/similar cards.
So, is this a Consignee I should stay away from?
He has been recommended because he is much faster than PWCC to complete the entire sales process than PWCC
With this reputation will he have problem actual selling the item at correct price?
Probstein has 810,000 positive feedback on ebay. I’m not entirely sure what everyone is worried about
I have never had an issue buying from them.
we should have an e4 consignment ebay page
run by somebody trusted obviously
That would be awesome. However, PWCC gets a special eBay rate that reduces their fees because of their volume and most likely so does Probstein. You’d end up losing money. It would take years to build up the client base and to push out the kind of volume PWCC does. It would also take an entire team to do what they do. It’s too much work for one person and they gotta make money and live life too!
It would be better to just manage your own sales and learn the “business” so to speak.
Well this was not a good situation and reflects very poorly on them.