just curious, I filed a complaint with ebay about it (not that it'll do any good)

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=290304614004

Moved to hockey card talk.

I know for myself, that's generally how I bid. Often only moving up a couple of bucks, instead of $10, at a time. Rather than just punching in my 'true' max bid.... I'll run up the price, and see what the actual max bid is.

Saying that, I would be suspicious of a user bidding in that manner, when they've got the big '0' for their feedback score. At the same time, little risky for the seller to be using fake accounts (or friends accounts) to run the bidding up in multiples of $10, when the final price was $50. You max bid could very easily have been $48 or $3, or something like that, instead of $50. Plus...... the guy have nearly 6k feedback. Is he going to toss that away for a $50 card? I would like to think no.

Its entirely possible its a genuine bidder, but 0 bidders bidding 10 dollar increments would have me concerned too.

Its entirely possible its a genuine bidder, but 0 bidders bidding 10 dollar increments would have me concerned too.

that's my concern, it's been done in $10 increments, newbies (in general) just don't do that. I lost a Neal Ice the other day because someone sniped it from me, I had my max bid at 99.99 (because it was numbered 99/99). I wanted this card, but I've retracted my bid because I feel it has been shilled, and I emailed the seller and told him why.

Personally, my seller preferences are set at I accept no bids from buyers with 0 feedback, more than 1 unpaid item strike and a couple other things. I just don't trust 0 feedback buyers especially on high dollar cards. Jim

thanks for the thoughts guys

I bid like that all the time and Im pretty new. My conection is slow and I have lost alot of cards I really wanted cause the other bidder would up me by a dollar. I won a card yesterday I was suspicious of though. The price went from $31 to $115 in a matter of seconds with someone bidding against me constantly then it stopped suddenly. The card however is worth considerably more I figure and I wanted it badly so Im paying anyway.

I would definitely say "YES" this is shill bidding. The seller of this item also had a Luke Shenn Ice RC that was going for $23 until the same bidder (t***3) bumped it up to $75.

I am also suspicious when I see that bidder t***3 has bid on 58 different items and has not won a single auction. To me that says SHILL.

How do you figure out how many different things that person bid on?

Go to the auction page and click on the name of the high-bidder. Since the auction is open it will show the fake name (with the ***). When you click on the name it will bring up a screen showing the recent bid activity for that person. It also shown how many items they have bid on (top part of screen)

Catching a shill is sometimes very difficult. Sometimes you have to look at the bidders history and compare it to the seller's history.

Thanks good to know. I wonder if there is a way to find the people with the worst feedback rating. I love reading all the horrible things people write over a slight inconveniance lol

I have no patience with shill bidders and bidding. I had a teenage son who wanted me to sell a rare Slipknot CD for him since he didn't have an Ebay account a few years back. I was amazed when the price went over $125 dollars on just the last day.

Looking at the list of bidders - it came down finally to two bidders - I found a name that sounded somewhat familiar. Everytime bidder A made a bid, bidder B bumped it by $3 exactly. Turns out, my son had a friend who keep bidding on it to jack up the price for him. After confronting my son, and getting the truth, when the auction ended, and bidder A won, I only charged him the bid he offered before the shill bidding occurred, which was about $65 less than the final price. My son, who paid for the S/H, also paid for the higher Ebay charges.

It upset my son to no end that he didn't get the higher price, but if there's an integrity issue - there's no contest - integrity wins every time. And there should be no place for shill bidding on Ebay.

That's a valuable lesson I'm sure he won't forget. I suspect the shill on alot of things I buy. I was outbid on a card once that ended up going pretty high I quit bidding within the last minute cause it was to high for the card. Shortly after the end of auction the seller contacted me and said the high bidder retracted his bid I recieved the second chance offer. I said "No thanks" lol to bad for him

Really? I would assume if he's going to send out a 2nd chance offer, he'd have to drop out all of the other guy's bids.

Let's say bidder 'A' is winning an auction for $60. Then bidder 'B' starts shilling him. The auction works its way up, bidder 'A' bids $100, and 'B' then wins it for $102.50. (There were no other bidders involved once it went over $60).

If Bidder 'B' backs out of paying (becuase it was a bogus shill bid, or otherwise) if the seller comes back to 'A' and offers it for $60 (the price before the non-payer got involved) then I think 'A' is making a fair enough deal. Anything more than that, and he should run away.




That's a valuable lesson I'm sure he won't forget. I suspect the shill on alot of things I buy. I was outbid on a card once that ended up going pretty high I quit bidding within the last minute cause it was to high for the card. Shortly after the end of auction the seller contacted me and said the high bidder retracted his bid I recieved the second chance offer. I said "No thanks" lol to bad for him

I had one experience with a shill bidder where an item inexplicably went from $15 to $105. I did some research (this was before eBay changed the way they show bidders) and discovered, by obtaining their eBay member information, that the seller and suspected shill lived in the same town and had the same last name.

Because I really wanted the cards, I e-mailed the seller and warned him that if the shill bids were not retracted i would pass my findings on to eBay, the local prosecutor and the Postal Inspectors. (If an eBay auction is shipped via USPS it makes any eBay related crime a case of mail fraud which is a Federal Offense)

Lo and behold, the shill bid was retracted. I also told the seller that I would be watching future auctions and if I saw him ripping of another person I would report it.

Ranfordfan- Your ight about that but even if he had offered it up for $5 I still wouldn't buy out of principle. There are a lot of dirty dealers on ebay in the span of a week I had two different people bidding on my items with hijacked accounts.

Yeah.... and fair enough. I fully agree with the idea of not dealing with a guy you know to be full of dirty tricks.