Why is this selling for so much?

So I was just checking eBay like I do every night and saw this little guy and the price was shocking. And was wondering why this was selling fro so much. I check the bids and it seems like the same person is bidding them selves up. I assume this is an inside job and wouldnt this be considered shill bidding?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/24K-Gold-Am...Individual&hash=item27c1e9c5df#ht_2151wt_1191

 

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Is there such thing as this coin. XD Maybe this guy has a program which autobids for him and he made a mistake. I don't see why I guy would bid every time in seconds most of the time.

 

I have a bigger question; who would buy that?

 

It looks like the user d***u put in a bid of 35 dollars (or higher) and anytime someone else tried placing a bid, they got outbid.

 

Believe me, it happens relatively often. Some people just do not get how an auction works! I usually like it when they find my auctions.

 

u***7 likely had a high bid of 35.00 or so and the other user kept bidding at the increments shown until they surpassed them, that's likely what has happened. I don't think it's the seller shilling, it's just a user who kept incrementing in hopes to surpass the other bidders max bid amount.

 

If I'm following,

1/1 17:40:35 d***u placed the high bid ($2.50)

1/1 19:16:22 - 1/2 17:07:10 d***u placed a bunch of steadily increasing bids that didn't show because d***u was already the high bidder (bid count would have gone up without the bid amount changing).

1/2 19:09:47 u***7 placed a bid for $36.35, becoming the high bidder and seeing d***u's final bid

1/2 19:13:21 u***7 retracts his bid

1/2 19:16:22 u***7 places a bid for $35.00, matching d***u's high bid
at this point, we start seeing all of d***u's bids

final result: d***u earlier bid wins. Unless d***u complains, u***7 has forced d***u to pay the maximum amount bid.

Why did d***u bid so high? haven't a clue.

Shill bidder? u***7 was probably a shill bidder. May have come across d***u in other auctions and saw a chance to get even.

 

First off it's gold plated. Mercury dimes were made of silver.

If you look at the bids, 18 to be exact, the bidders must have really wanted it, or believed it is made of gold.

 

Looks like shill bidding to me.

 

Certainly looks that way to me, too, and this isn't something I normally look for. Worth reporting?

 

Wouldn't matter, Ebay has never "seen" an example of shill bidding. Their response is always that they don't have sufficient evidence.

 

Waste of time reporting even though eBay's TOS prohibit it.

 

If I put up my max bid of $100.00 early and the minimum bid is $10.00, it will show that I bid $10.00.
If another bidder bids $11.00, they are automatically outbid as my bid now becomes $12.00.
Then someone else comes along and bids $13.00. My automatic bid goes to $14.00, and so on and
so on, possibly up to my original $100.00 bid.
This is not shill bidding, it's automatic bidding. Heritage allows this on their auctions, too.

 

And they likely don't. They see two accounts, with different emails, different mailing addresses, etc. Then you have to take into account the logs, which are probably huge and horrendous to sort through to pinpoint perhaps if the seller and bidder account were from the same IP Address, which can be easily faked or spoofed or they could simply do it from a totally different ISP, etc. So with the amount of time and resources it would likely take them, it's not worth eBay's or really your own time, especially if you're not trying to win the item.

 

I don't think it would be hard at all. An eBay employee would see an unobscured list of bidders for every auction; that makes things a lot easier.

The suspicious pattern here is:

User Alice lists an item.

User Bob places a bid.

User Eve places a series of bids, continuing until she exceeds Bob's maximum bid. She then retracts that last bid, and places another one, exactly matching Bob's maximum. Since Bob bid that amount first, he gets the high bid.

First of all, I can't see any justification other than shill bidding for this behavior. Why place a bid that you know will only match, not exceed, another bidder's maximum?

Be that as it may, if you see that Eve is doing this same thing repeatedly on Alice's auctions, it's extremely strong evidence of collusion, whether or not Alice and Eve are connecting from the same IP or geographic location. You don't have to troll through massive logs; you just have to search for Alice's auctions that Eve bid on. I have to imagine that eBay has tools for their employees to do that with ease.

Personally, I think that Eve should get NARU'ed for abusing the bid-retraction facility regardless. But I just can't see any explanation for this behavior other than shill bidding. What am I missing?

 

Only problem with your theory, the winner bidder made all but 2 of the 18 bids, 16 right in a row. Wouldn't the bids he bid against in those 15 consecutive bids would be displayed?

 

Perhaps if it's the same member driving up the prices on a sellers auctions, then only to retract, that's obvious but I bet those that do in fact do this are smart enough to not do this. So first, find a member doing this, then it's pretty obvious if it's done on a large majority of auctions.

If it's just once or twice, although fishy it may be, still not enough evidence as I'm sure there are literally thousands of bid retractions a day on eBay. Who could explain people's behavior though, I'm sure there's actually plenty of occurrences where someone keeps bidding but then immediately realizes that once they are the high bidder, they may not like the item or found a flaw with it, etc. You can't rule that out either.

I'm willing to bet eBay isn't going to likely care until the item's price is very high, where it really does make a difference and makes it worth both eBay and the person who reports it (who's likely bidding on the item) time and resources.

 

Not from what I've seen.

I've put in max bids, when someone bids higher than the current price (not my max bid), it removes my previous high bid (current price) and puts up the next highest one if it hasn't surpassed my max bid.


Say for instance:

An item is a $1.00 and I put in my max bid of $30. I technically only made one bid on the item.

Another member comes along and puts in a max bid of $5.00, so the prices jumps to $6.00, it will display their bid and then my top bid at the current going price. If they made another bid to try and outbid me, not knowing my max bid is $30 and say made their next bid of $15.00, it would show their $5.00 bid, then their $15.00 bid and then mine which I assume is now at $16.00.

The bidding history only records actual bid amounts entered. Since I only put in one bid at $30.00, it's not going to display because I theoretically did not make those incremental bid amounts to still be top bidder.

Hopefully that makes sense. What we're seeing in the auction is this exact behavior, the only fishy part is, the many many consecutive bids but then the member to almost immediately retract the last bid that doesn't make them top bidder any longer. Fishy, but unless this member is doing it to all of this seller's auctions, I hate defending eBay myself, it's not enough to warrant shill bids, especially if it's just this one time without eBay really investigating thoroughly more than likely by digging into logs, tracking IP Addresses, trying to link the two accounts back to the same party, if they're affiliated, etc.