CNG-112 - Mr Shill revealed

What is the deal with Leu? This is the first I am hearing of this but it is being spoken of like it is sort of common knowledge.

 

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Name and shame, man.

 

Do you think Frank would accept your 39x bid after he told you that it would take over 40x to move into the lead? To me, his telling the high bid carries with it only two choices: bid to take the lead or drop out.

 

what if you see a coin with a very low $10 starting bid and place your 10,000 bid... will anyone bidding against you not be allowed to bid you up past your $10 bid unless they are willing to spend over $10,000? Edit nevermind - I was thinking the 12x bid didn’t count as a “real bid”.

 

I don't know what would happen if I submitted through biddr, especially if he didn't know I was the one enquiring on the max bid. Another possiblity would be to create a 2nd handle and bid it up with inside knowledge of the high bid. Maybe He does a thorough job of preventing this, just something I wondered about.

 

It's very interesting that others have the same thoughts. I may have had the same experience before and I thought it was just a coincidence. Maybe it IS a coincidence but it bears close watching.

 

Ditto. Some elaboration would be most welcome.

I thought that the burglary and theft from their office last Christmas spoke of somewhat lax security precautions, and I heard of very unfortunate delayed shipping issues. Also, I don’t like their habit of sending out expensively bound and printed catalogs in an attempt to raise the auction value of otherwise unspectacular coins.

Apart from that, I had generally positive experiences with Leu. Yet, my coins d not fall into the weight class were shill bidding becomes really profitable.

 

I deplore the various shady practices described above.

Here's some helpful inside info for y'all, at least for auctions on biddr (it's one reason I like that platform). If you submit a pre-bid, the auction house can see what it is. However, if you submit a proxy bid (one that is executed only during the live auction) it is totally private to you.

So I recommend always using proxy bids, if you're unable to attend the live auction.

 

A shill bid is a fraudulent scheme to inflate the price of a lot. It is done when the auctioneer is the owner, or at least has full control, over that lot and is usually done with shadow accounts to mask the true identity of the bidder as well as create the appearance of a lot of interest to get more action from the mark.

This is not the same thing as bidding on your own coin.

If I consign a coin that's worth to me, say, $1,000 and the auctioneer's policy is to set the starting bid at $100 I'd be an idiot to not become involved in the bidding. The auctioneer sets the bidding start price (aka reserve) and not the coin's owner so this is effectively my only way of setting a reserve price.

Rasiel

 

Interesting! Unfortunately, it seems few auction houses opt to enable proxy bids on Biddr.

 

It's common knowledge. Collectors swap stories. Absolute consistency, and a lot of data swapped among collectors to confirm their bad behaviour. Leu Numismatik will raise all your bids to your max. When I read Nathan's post I shrugged and said "he is talking about Leu so may as well say so". Another friends saw Nathan's post and immediately messaged me to say "we know who that is".

 

As a separate post, as it is a totally separate issue, I've never bid on a coin of mine, nor asked anyone else to do so with purpose of raising price (I do point out coins which friends might want to consider for their collections) and I am not aware of any major auction company that allows this. Auction houses will purchase for themselves, at auction, coins consigned by others of course. But thats not bidding on their own coins, its bidding on other peoples coins. Also, when an auctioneer seems to buy coins from their table, its probably just them executing bids for clients. Much of this thread seems to be conjectures, fluff with no concrete claims suggesting that coin owners are bidding on their own coins with the agreement of the auctioneers. Of course am sure it happens without permission of the auctioneers. But I am just not aware of any case where it is explicitly allowed. Reserves, as said before are a different matter as two independent bidders still need to bid to reach the reserve.

I agree with Barry. Zero evidence of any shill activity in the example OP calls "mr shill revealed". Nothing is revealed except perfectly ordinary bidding activity. Reduce the numbers by a factor of ten and it might have been me bidding $2189 on a coin estimated at $1500 and winning at that number over someone who bid $2100. Nothing is revealed.​

 

Well before your post I basically already wrote exactly the same thing about the bidding increments and I argued that it can't be a poor planning since the bidder is well experienced.

W.r.t Gasvoda, there is a large group of high end coins that were sold which were now resold as being from the "Antiquarium group" so your argument isn't very relevant is it?

 

Everyone is free to read the facts and draw their own conclusions. Either the person who won has a very poor strategy which I really doubt or he has a sneaky -least to say- strategy. I don't think you can just scale down the bids and make an analogy in this case with the 2100 you quote. I think it would be common sense to protect yourself by adding 102$ bucks so you don't get clio'd in a coin selling for 22000$. It is not the first time I see cng bidders winning with 998 or 1999 etc. but this one was too obvious/extreme

 

Yes, we all understand that whenever you don't win a coin, at a price that you consider fair, it can only be the result of unethical or illegal practices. Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that another collector values a coin more highly than you do.

Phil Davis

 

I don't know how you got that impression can you give me an example?
p.s. we are talking about the coin which hammered 13k last january so you really believe I would have been the underbidder for 21k and complain about the winner who got it now for 21899?

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with someone bidding on their own coin at an auction that allows it and does not set reserves. This is a normal mechanism by which the owner can effectively set their minimum at the time of sale, and can be a way to save on fees versus a higher reserve if the item does not sell at a desired price.

 

There was no strategy on the part of the high bidder, only by the underbidder. Barry pointed out how this can work, and I also sometimes use odd amounts to bid. The high bidder simply bid enough to beat that odd amount by the underbidder. Keep in mind these are electronic auctions, and a computer simply does the math.

 

Hopefully we and other bidders will encourage them to do so! It's a relatively new feature, so it may take some time.

Meanwhile, patronize those who have it enabled.

 

@Andrew McCabe Hmmm. I didn’t know anything about this. I take your word on it but I buy stuff mostly in the $100 and under range so maybe I just didn’t notice. And I happen to like the catalog work they do. Maybe it helps inflate the prices of common coins but on their own I just like them.