Tnolan

General
1

I for some reason have theis feeling in my stomach that Tnolan engages in shill bidding.

I do not like bidding on his auctions but in some instances it is my only choice.

Does anybody feel the same, that he shill bids?

The stories i hear is that he is a pretty rotten seller. Anybody got any stories.

Also, where does this person get all their cards from (on a continuous basis). FLipping does not seem accurate as he auctions and sometime prices are low (but then the shilling potentially kicks in).

3

i think he does shill. Most of his auctions go for cheap then some random card will go 3 times the market price, its too weird. I also have no clue where he gets all his stuff from, a lot of it looks like packs hes opened but who knows

4

It might be helpful (if not obligatory) to cite specific evidence if accusing someone of wrongdoing like this.

(Would you want someone making a thread like this about you without citing specific evidence?)

2 Likes
5

Most of what I’ve seen of his are his PSA 9’s going for insanely cheap. Any links to share of things you think that were shilled? I’ve not personally noticed any but I haven’t followed him really. I did deal with him several times last year though. Initially through eBay then arranging buys through text/email and never had an issue.

He told me he had one source for the bulk of what he had at the time from buying out a ridiculously large WOTC collection tons of sealed boxes and mint ungraded cards. He had thousands of cards headed to PSA at the time. I’ms sure he has been able to find more here and there as many others do.

1 Like
6

Haven’t had any problems with auctions really. There was that one Dark Vaporeon LC auction that I can only wonder who were the two that bid $930, but it hasn’t popped up again…

7

I’ve seen him relist legendary collection psa 10s multiple times over the last 6 months. He could have multiple copies and use the same picture but some of the prices are insane.

8

He came off a bit rude to me as well. I sent several offers for LC 10s about 6 months ago and most were very good offers. Some were 50% higher than what the previous sold for. He did have these listed at the time for like $750-$1,000 when most of these were selling for $100-$200. He messaged me saying if I keep sending lowball offers he is going to block me. Haven’t tried doing business with him since.

1 Like
9

Last year I auctioned off a PSA 10 gold star espeon and a PSA 10 gold star umbreon. Both “sold” for over $10,000. I did not tamper in the auctions, but multiple other people sure did. It was virbank/IG people who had an interest in propping up the prices of PSA 10 gold stars. Scott has addressed it in a video recently. Shilling can be but isn’t always done by the seller and unfortunately sellers really have no way to stop bidders from doing so. I also had a similar issue selling of a Pikachu GS 10 that took until my 3rd auction listing after some mass buyer blocking to actually sell.

2 Likes
10

Yeah he actually has a ‘lowballers get blocked’ message when you make an offer on his best offer listings. I remember messaging him about it and he was actually nicer than I expected.

I have a feeling he has a lot of money tied into his LC cards… I noticed the same weird stupid high pricing or some auctions ending way higher than market price on LC, but he lets everything else go whatever he gets for them. He actually loses quite a bit on many listings running $0.99 auctions on niche cards that fly under the radar.

11

$930 just feels really high for vap lc 10 holo. It is low pop but it feels like theres little interest to complete a large reprint set. I also feel like theres lots of mint sitting out there based on conversations I’ve had.

The LC Rev/Holo eeveelutions are the last WoTC ones I need to pick up, but I’m put off by their pricing atm. Most of the sold ones I saw are getting instaflipped at high list prices.

12

I remember your auctions… I was so disheartened because I was selling a PSA 10 Espeon at the same time. I would love to sell a few more of my things via auction but the time wasted due to shillers is a very heavy deterrent.

13

I never bought from nolan or dealt with him on eBay so I don’t pay much attention to his work methods but he has had MAJOR dealings with me without incident.

3 Likes
14

I literally just dealt with this guy. I saw he listed some PSA 9s of a set I wanted. I asked him if he had any 10s, which he did. I offered him extremely fair prices for them all. He comes back and asks 3x the market price or hes going to list them all on Ebay. Fuck that guy,

5 Likes
15

He’s the guy who relisted that rainbow energy unlimited I was after :expressionless: was gonna bid and try to win it, next minute relisted and bought :joy: that’ll teach me

16

Hi everyone! Thanks for being so candid about your thoughts and experiences with me on eBay.

To set the record straight, I do not engage in shill bidding. Never have, nor do I have the time to do so. I’ve only got one eBay account that I list items from, and that’s all I use. If the OP has any specific examples of items numbers that he/she feels have been shilled, please post them here and I’ll check back and I’ll post screenshots of the bidders to prove it.

Now, on to the emotional aspects that some of you have against me. Yes, we charge $3.50 shipping on all of our auctions, regardless - no exception. I’ve moved away from BIN listings because I got tired of dealing with what I perceived as lowball offers. Keep in mind, most of these “experiences” came when I just received cards back from PSA. Of course I’m going to list them at stupid prices because it costs me nothing to do so, and sometimes people actually do pay them. I once received $200 from a guy in Australia for a full art holo Kingdra PSA 10 from Primal Clash. So, yes, it does happen. I’ve found that it’s just much easier now to do auctions.

If you’re thinking that prices have been higher recently, perhaps it’s because we are the featured seller with a huge banner linking directly to our exclusive auctions on the eBay toys page. We’ve also had ebay’s Marketing team reach out to other platforms and we’ve been featured recently on the Pokémon blog dot com and a couple others.

I have ZERO tolerance for some circumstances (letting your “kid” bid, bidding and immediately asking to cancel, etc.) that occur and yes, I am oftentimes very direct with my comments when it happens. At the end of the day, let’s not forget that eBay is a price driven platform that sells commodities. There is minimal “customer loyalty” at best. What I mean by this, is that from a merchant’s perspective, most people aren’t going to pay me more money for the same item that someone else is selling for less, just because I am me. That just doesn’t happen, so there really isn’t any incentive to go above and beyond to provide certain aspects of what most would consider “exceptional customer service”. This means I ONLY focus on hassle-free transactions. The Pareto principle states that 20% of your customers are going to account for 80% of your problems, so I actively try to eliminate those 20% customers from my interactions when I’m dealing with a strictly price-based selling process.

The old saying goes, “good - fast - cheap, pick two”. eBay handles the “cheap” with their lowest price auction model, and we ship immediately. Those customers that have unrealistic expectations that they can get all 3, we invite them (through our directness) to shop elsewhere.

5 Likes
17

Jake, I apologize for that. We received an offer for $300 on it that I decided to take. For the unlimited version, I felt that the offered price was worth taking. It was also coming from someone that we’ve had thousands of transactions with, so I was happy to do so.

Also, for the guy (Delightful Tyranitar) that says “fuck me” because I wouldn’t take his $25 offer for Rev holo PSA 10 Call of Legends, sure… I just received them and I gave you a price of $80 per card because I felt that was an acceptable amount of value to capture for you asking me to sell cards that were newly received, that have low pop, and have not been sold on ebay’s Platform recently. My decision was based on logic. If you want something, and if you want the item offered exclusively to you before it hits market, expect to pay for that privilege. Otherwise, I’m sure I’ll see your eBay user ID bidding on those cards with everyone else because there isn’t customer loyalty on a price driven sales process (which means there isn’t “disloyalty” either).

7 Likes
18

Oh don’t get me wrong man no hard feelings whatsoever:) if someone wanted it more than me then so beit :ok_hand: I’ll have to be quicker never time haha still watching some of your rocket stuff any way :smirk:

1 Like
19

Welcome to the forum @tnols :blush:

3 Likes
20

This proves my point about the lack of customer loyalty/disloyalty on the eBay platform. Their business model disincentivizes auction sellers from having to provide customer service because the majority of the transaction’s “value” is derived primarily from the item’s scarcity (and not the individual value of the exchanging parties).

Strictly speaking from an unemotional business perspective, it’s just much more efficient to focus on running auctions, shipping quickly, and firing “problem customers”.