Here is an interesting ebay auction that just ended. The 1/4 oz burnished platinum coin is a better date, but definitely not a $3,300 coin. What happened here? A zero feedback bidder at the end and someone who bid over $3,000 three days before the auction ended? http://www.ebay.com/itm/2006-W-One-...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
It looks to me like a bidder made a mistake. I'm thinking whoever bid $3260 noticed their mistake too late when they couldn't retract the bid (or didn't want to use retract bid) so they used a dummy account (hence zero feedback) to cover their mistake.
Strange thing is that the 0 feedback buyer put in two bids and the other bidder has over 200 bid retractions (click on their feedback number when logged in to see). The oddities of ebay...
It could be shill bidding then. Seller maybe used dummy account to put a high max bid in and then hope someone bids it up. That might also explain the high number of bid retractions on the other account (2nd dummy account). This is basically a way of setting a reserve without paying eBay fee for it. It can also be advantageous versus a regular reserve by possibly baiting bidders into paying more than they wanted. If bids don't reach a satisfactory price for seller then they just leave the high max bid alone. Otherwise they retract it leaving the next guy in line to win the auction. It's sneaky on the sellers part. I would suggest avoiding sellers like this when you sense something suspicious but if they are selling something you really want then just make sure you don't fall into the trap and overpay. Stuff like this is mostly done by small sellers but amazingly I've seen some high volume sellers do it also. They don't do the retract bid nonsense but they do use dummy accounts to run up prices. Reporting it to eBay hasn't changed anything either. I guess they look the other way with big dogs. Perhaps they also can't prove it although it seems obvious.
I was just thinking the same thing! http://www.ebay.com/itm/Something-R...cording-NEW-/161773159874?hash=item25aa6e85c2
