On Wednesday, July 20, 2005, at 04:56PM, Todd Hughes <dedhorse@d...> wro 
te:

>
> "Wm. Sanderson-Cassidy"  wrote....
[snip]
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>
>
>    Well maybe someone will explain it to me but I don't see how anybody , 
 
>the seller, a shill, or a legitmate bidder can tell on an ebay  auction wh 
at 
>another bidders high bid is unless they bid past it.

Any number of ways. First, there is eBay's incremental bid policy, i.e. if  
something is going for X then the minimum bid is Y. If an unknown bidder fi 
res in a series of incrementals...a long series...he is probing your price, 
 obviously. Second, he can look you up on eBay, see if you bought something 
 similar, and determine what you paid.

>Sure maybe somebody 
>might bid up to your high bid by chance but how do they really know that 
 
>your high bid was $75 ....and not $100 or more? 

Because he puts in incrementals until he sees the "green check mark." If yo 
u bid against him again, he knows you are after the thing, and he repeats t 
he process.

The eBay policy states, "Put in the highest amount you are willing to pay." 
 It doesn't say, "Probe the price and bid the other guy up."

>I would sure like to hear how somebody "Knows" it 
>is happening.

Usually, real bidders wait for the last bid and come out of nowhere (unless 
 it is a "whale," and then they just demolish you at the gate and keep on d 
emolishing. I bid $125,000 on a little jade thing in Tokyo once, which was  
fair, and a guy across the room kicked it straight to $225,000, which was i 
nsane....good night, nurse). Shills, who do not work alone...they usually w 
ork in pairs, sometimes more...will nickel and dime a price back and forth  
providing what the auction trade calls "heat." If the item in question is a 
 $20.00 item, it is one thing, but in a mid ticket item, it is fairly simpl 
e to tell. On eBay you can see it in the bid history. A guy bids $1.00 on M 
onday, then disappears. He comes back on Thursday, bids $100., and gets int 
o a fast and furious nickel and dime with somebody else. Then they disappea 
r. Any consistent bidders get churned up. Finally, if a guy turns up in sev 
eral of your auctions---buying eccentric stuff only you would buy, he is ei 
ther your long lost brother or somebody has you zoned and bracketed.

That is why enabling people to track a buyer's bid and purchase history suc 
ks. "Prices realized" is fair and standard practice. Identifying who is put 
ting out the cash is an invitation to fraud, (except in the art world, wher 
e it is an invitation to larceny on a much grander scale) and eBay should b 
e sophisticated enough to realize that.

>I have a friend down in Fla. who bid on alot of my Ebay 
>auctions because he had a Colt pistol I wanted and he took the price of th 
e 
>ebay tools off the pistols price.Worked out good for us both and I don't 
 
>think it was unethical at all .

Well, you might want to read eBay's new policy on that (and no, I am not ca 
lling you unethical at all...I would not do that....I am just saying that t 
he system is being abused, and it is better to deal with knowns than unknow 
ns).

>After I got the Colt he kept bidding on my 
>stuff ,[and paying  cash of course when he won] almost exclusivly because  
he 
>knew and trusted me. My point is that i am sure it looked "Funny" to see 
 
>this one bidder with feedback only from me bidding just on my auctions but 
 
>of course it was legitment and he wasn't a shill.

That isn't the point. If you see "disappearing bidders" with ZERO feedback  
who have joined up dates in the recent past...that is what looks funny.

>   Disapointed to hear that it is "ridiculous to think you are going to ge 
t 
>a bargin" at an auction....Gee I was a thinking  I did pretty good today 
 

[snip]

It can happen, but not consistently, and it sure depends on what you buy.
Are you going to put mid to high ticket collector grade stuff out without c 
hecking very carefully and trying for top dollar? Know anybody who does? I' 
d like to meet them.

Are you going to bid $10.00, and then $10.50, and so forth on a mint condit 
ion Exhibition Brace?
How about a Stanley 1? If you know enough to want a Stanley 1, and you know 
 prices realized in the past, do you think it can be engineered away from a 
 known collector with a track record? These things regularly turn at $1,000 
. to $1,400., so why bid a $100? and then $125.00, etc., etc. Feeling lucky 
? I am not talking about farm auctions here. 

Yet, speaking of farm auctions, look at the eBay action on "barn drills." Y 
ou know, the sit-down timber boring augers. Tell me that isn't being cooked 
. These things are as common as dirt, but you are getting 15 or 20 guys in  
there slugging it out and they're going off at $300.00 or more. Strange, ho 
w if you pick out a single item like that, you see a ton of people with ZER 
O next to their name who bid on one and then disappear, never to bid anothe 
r. Then you see guys who are consistently buying, and you see them getting  
whacked time and time again.

As a seller, you know that you can see how many bidders you have versus how 
 many watchers, and you have a page hit counter. If your item got hit 50 ti 
mes and you have 37 watchers and one bidder, you know there can be some act 
ion. Some people try to jump start that action and build heat.

My whole point with the original post was to offer my opinion that guys who 
 buy old tools to use them are better off buying from other guys who buy ol 
d tools to use them, rather than from people who just buy old tools to sell 
 them, and there are precious few places where that can be done anymore. Co 
llecting is another issue.

"The world around you is a reflection of your reaction to the world around  
you."

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