Check the bidding history - is the person listed as "m***m" inflating the price? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220861950430 I thought I was going to score a nice deal, the listing was in the wrong category and as of one hour ago was at only $15 for 80+ silver dimes! But then I went back and *poof* it's gone up over a hundred dollars. Obviously it's at a fair price, but I'm very suspicious of the "m***m" person, who has 142 bid retractions in the last 6 months! I also can't figure out how, in the bid history, the most recent bid is listed as Sept. 24, and the two below it are Sept. 25...... Any ideas?
I don't see any problem with the bidding on the auction you linked. The Sept. 24th bid is on top because it is still the high bid. The retractions deal is really crazy.
1) The bidder shows no previous history of bidding on items from this seller; therefore, there's no implication of shill bidding. The retractions issue is interesting, but probably not relevant here. 2) This is a perfectly normal bidding pattern. Many, perhaps most, fixed-term (not Buy It Now) auctions for silver start at a small fraction of melt, and stay there until close to the close. 3) An auction may be ill-described or in the wrong category, but if you spotted it, others can, too. Many bidders will delay showing their interest until the last second -- the fewer people have bid on an auction, the less attention it's likely to gather, and the less competition there will be. ("This looks interesting, but if nobody else is bidding on it, maybe they're seeing something I'm not.") 4) Check out the eBay help section on automatic bidding. It should answer your question about bid dates. I was tracking an auction last week for a lot of 20 Barber quarters that included an 1896-S -- one of the major keys, considerably rarer and more valuable than the 1916-D Mercury or the 1909-S VDB cent in a comparable grade (FR-AG). It was sitting right at melt until a few minutes before close, then bounced up to more than double in the last few seconds. (It still might have been a steal, but I wasn't confident enough at Barber valuation to bid much higher.)
I always have an issue with these high bid retractions.. 23 to 24 per month for the last 6 months? I thought there were rules about high bid retractions... I've seen plenty of bidders with these high numbers....
