This weird eBay auction, which was discussed here a couple of months ago, is back. In fact it is the same auction for the same items with the same insanely high shipping charges, and the same bizarre high number of bids from new, no-history bidders.
I remember the strange, green, silver and orange "B and O" childishly painted Penn Line passenger cars.
The seller is the same as before and as before, the rabid bidders are unknown and are bidding furiously.
I thought this trashy junk had sold earlier. Anyone have any idea what is going on here?
I'm puzzled why this bothers you, and why you find it even worth mentioning.
If you look at the auction, you can see the seller has gone to great lengths not to deceive any potential buyers. Typical description:
"All the engines in this pic ARE DEAD AND DID NOT RUN OR LIMP ALONG AT ALL; MANY SPARKS FLEW AND LIGHTS CAME ON BUT THEY WOULD NOT MOVE AN INCH EVEN WHEN NUDGED".
People know exactly what they're getting, and some still choose to bid. Nobody's being bamboozled or coerced here that I can see. Just move along, folks.
Robert B wrote: : : I thought this trashy junk had sold earlier. Anyone have any idea what : is going on here? : Why are you asking us, and not the seller?
From what I see there most likely some hownest bidders at the start and the other three major bidders are either the owner of the trains bidding with 3 or 4 ebay accounts ...I myself would report this to ebay or anyone who thinks this guy might be committing fraud and theft of your bidded items before you paid him ..
There is something most likely wrong and I'd stay away unless other train people have better advice on the situation...
The sells and bidders have very little or no track record and I smell a fishy loaded boxcar you'd better stay away...
Brock R Bailey snipped-for-privacy@shaw.ca Victoria BC Canada
So explain to me how this "scam" would work. Let's assume you're right and there are some "shill" bidders here; their job is to drive the price higher, right? Well, that hardly seems foolproof to me. One of two things will happen: worst case, one of the shills will win the auction, meaning he's bidding on his own stuff he wants to get rid of, right?
The other outcome is that an "honest" bidder will win the auction. I still fail to see how this is unfair: nobody's holding a gun to *his* head and forcing him to bid, so presumably he's happy to get the stuff for what he offered. Or am I missing something here?
If there are shill bidders it will drive up the final auction price... higher than if there were no shill bidders and only the "honest" bidder. So in that case, it would be a scam to the honest bidder.
Well, yes, sorta. I guess that tiny libertarian (small "l") part of me is screaming "Well, so what? The bidder is still bidding of their own free will, so if they paid too much, it's their own damn fault". Or something like that.
First of all , the seller has a perfect feedback rating . He's been selling for close to 2 years. He says this is the 3rd sale of 5 he is planning to liquidate an estate.
His last 2 sales which were of similiar items must have had happy buyers because the feedback is very good. His descriptions appear to be truthful and he has pictures to show you what he's selling.
The buyers who you say are bumping up the bids.....well , there's two of them who are apparently bidding for the first time since they have no ( buying) feedback. Gotta start somewhere .
One of those two won the bid so how would that drive up the price.
The other bidders have positive feedback from sales and/or purchases.
Apparently you do not sell on Ebay or you would know how hard it is to get 3 or 4 accounts.... and..... why would the seller want to buy his own merchandise ????
As far as the shipping goes , that seems like quite a lot at first thought , but I wonder how many boxes it will take to ship all
5000 items. He says there are many items that aren't pictured. But , the shipping cost is there in plain view , not trying to hide it.
I really don't get this ? If you haven't paid him yet.......???
Well, there is something called "shill bidding", where a seller gets phony "buyers" to drive up the price of an item. But it's doubtful to me that this is going on here, and even if it was, as I explained elsewhere, what difference does it really make? In the end, the winning bidder will presumably be paying up to what they bid, so what's the harm?
So what? The transaction is mutually consensual, right? Nobody's holding a gun to the buyer's head. If they bid $X for something, that becomes the "market price" for the item.
In case you're wondering, I'm not a libertarian. (Well, maybe just a wee little bit ...)
It's a fraudulent practice. The seller is conspiring with supposed buyers that don't actually want to buy the item in order to raise the price for possible buyers that actually want the item.
It can backfire. A shill bidder can win, then the seller still has the item and my guess is that E-Bay want's it's cut of the sale ... no!? On more than one occasion I have received an e-mail, shortly after the auction ends, from a seller stating the winning bidder has decided they don't want the item would I like to buy the item at my last bid?? I've offered to buy at my starting bid. I've never gotten a reply to those offers. It reeks of shill bidding. Paul
Well, OK; I do know that, technically speaking, it's a fraudulent practice. I don't condone it, but I'm just saying that in the overall scheme of things, it's really no big deal. Savvy, informed buyers (like all of us reading this, right?) aren't going to pay more for an item than we think it's worth, so really, what's the harm? And in the case of uninformed bidders, they're just as likely to overbid in a bidding war anyhow, so they don't need shills to push the price over what it should be anyhow.
Yes, so this makes it even more risky for sellers to engage in this practice. I say don't sweat it.
No matter how much you try to rationalize shill bidding as ok against informed or uninformed bidders, it's immoral. In the case of an uninformed bidder it still artificially inflates the price of the bid. Which directly 'steals' a saving from the uninformed bidder. An unformed bidder who overbids is being covertly coerced into believing the over inflated price is what is acceptable by the 'market'. And in fact there are two 'sins' in the transaction 1) artificially inflating a price beyond what is worth 2) lieing to a bidder by making them think that they are paying a valid market value.
Shilling also 'steals' a possible item from an informed bidder because they will not bid on it. Hence an item that they might have purchased is lost to them due to greed (seller).
In either case the perpetrators are conciously tricking somebody to bid an artifically high price. And that's immoral. If somebody is not familiar with shilling then how can they protect themselves from it? Perhaps anybody using the internet realy should get a crash course on how much slime and sleaze is on the internet...
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