Shill *buying* on ebay??

We've had 1 or 2 threads about shill bidding, but I've been wondering if shill buying is an even bigger problem.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like lately there have been a lot of BIN sales at prices that are way out of line with previous sales of the same items.

For an unscrupulous seller, this is actually a safer way to artificially inflate prices, because you can't see the buyer of a BIN listing, so you can't check how often the buyer purchases from the same seller. (If more than 1 unit is sold from the same listing, you can see the buyer, BUT the buyer's stats show 0% bids with that seller (ie. only bids are tracked, not BINs).

Thoughts? Comments?

I've noticed that too... Then the "bought" items re-appear again at slightly lower prices by the same sellers...lol

yes! I have seen this with the BATB dreams pin! All the same seller!

Interesting....I've never really thought about this. Thanks for bringing it up!

I suppose it is possible. However Ebay would notice the trend of someone not paying for or an item, or sale getting canceled over and over. If you notice a seller relisting the same thing multiple times after "completed" bin sales, you can notify eBay and they can access the records you mention in the OP. We cannot, but they can.

That being said, something else some sellers will do is list an item 2 times with different prices, at the same time. One for a price that is too high, and one for a slightly higher than average price. some people don't look to see who is selling, so as they scroll through the list, they see one for $50.00 and then one for $40.00 and think, "oh, 40 is much lower than 50! I will take it!" not realizing that normally that item sells for $30.00

I saw this for Tangled PODM. I'm not sure how often that really happens. It makes more sense for a pin that you have multiples of. I also saw it happen for the Brave Opening Day. It was released early and quickly was listed and sold BIN. Then the same seller listed more for like 10% less. In those situtation, it is always better to just wait for the actual release. The prices will come down.

I do wonder though, I think people legitametly don't care the price and just want to make sure they get a pin so they pay the BIN and could care less if the price is super high. It always cracks me up to see how fast a DSF surprise pin gets listed and how high the price is. I think some people honestly think they can set the bar for a pin value. But the first few almost never sell for that price, someone always comes in an undercuts it. I guess they just want to go really high to set the panic rush.

But who is willing to pay ebay commission on the same item more than once? Not me.

Spectromen said:

But who is willing to pay ebay commission on the same item more than once? Not me.

Click to expand...

if the sale is canceled, it wont show as canceled to the average eBay buyer, but the seller wont be charged "commission" for the canceled item either.

pargani said:

For an unscrupulous seller, this is actually a safer way to artificially inflate prices, because you can't see the buyer of a BIN listing, so you can't check how often the buyer purchases from the same seller. (If more than 1 unit is sold from the same listing, you can see the buyer, BUT the buyer's stats show 0% bids with that seller (ie. only bids are tracked, not BINs).

Click to expand...

Sure you can see the buyers of BIN auctions, just like you can see the buyers of any other auction... You just get the x***x (111) format, so you don't know exactly who it is, but you can still tell if it's the same person buying them...

You haven't been able to see a buyer's full ID in years, but you can always see the obfuscated IDs.

Psycho Pixie said:

I suppose it is possible. However Ebay would notice the trend of someone not paying for or an item, or sale getting canceled over and over. If you notice a seller relisting the same thing multiple times after "completed" bin sales, you can notify eBay and they can access the records you mention in the OP. We cannot, but they can.

Click to expand...

But the seller would have to _TELL_ eBay it wasn't paid for... If the seller is 'shill buying' to drive up the price, he wouldn't be reporting his own accounts (or friends, whatever) as non-paying bidders... Sellers don't _have_ to indicate that an item is paid for/shipped on eBay if they don't want to... And if it's a fake purchase, they'd just mark it paid/shipped quickly to keep their seller rating high.

Spectromen said:

But who is willing to pay ebay commission on the same item more than once? Not me.

Click to expand...

Why not? You have a pin that's really worth $50, so you fake-sell it for $200. eBay charges you the commission (what is it these days? Even at 10% that's only $20), now you really sell the pin at a "much discounted" $180. At 10% commission you've paid $38 to increase your pin's value by $130 (thus $92 additional profit in this example). Not a bad racket (and I'm pretty sure eBay's fees are less than 10%, just don't know off hand...)

rik1138 said:

Sure you can see the buyers of BIN auctions, just like you can see the buyers of any other auction... You just get the x***x (111) format, so you don't know exactly who it is, but you can still tell if it's the same person buying them...

You haven't been able to see a buyer's full ID in years, but you can always see the obfuscated IDs.

Click to expand...

I know you can see bidders on auctions as x***x (##), but that isn't coming up for me on BIN sales. You can pull it up where there is (# sold) beside the selling price, but most of them don't have that.

Try this link:

offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=xxxxxxxxxxxx

(Note to mods: not a real working link as-is, needs to have a real eBay auction # edited into it... Hopefully that's okay to post...)

Replace the 'xxxxxxxxxxxxx' with the actual item number you are curious about, it should show up with that... Sometimes getting eBay to provide this link is difficult.

rik1138 said:

Try this link:

offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=xxxxxxxxxxxx

(Note to mods: not a real working link as-is, needs to have a real eBay auction # edited into it... Hopefully that's okay to post...)


Replace the 'xxxxxxxxxxxxx' with the actual item number you are curious about, it should show up with that... Sometimes getting eBay to provide this link is difficult.

Click to expand...

Aha!...so is it possible to navigate to that page from a listing?...or do I have to use that link?

Directly from a listing, I don't think so anymore... That _used_ to be what auction links looked like on eBay a few years ago before they got all weird and ridiculously long... I have several bookmarks for creating much more useful links than eBay seems to generate. They are all gung-ho about having lots of graphics, images and Javascript all over the screen... I prefer lines of boring text myself...

There's another link for looking at a sellers items without the thumbnail images (i.e., boring text), and when you click on the 'See Buyers' link, you get that kind of view, even if it's a 1-item BIN...

If I really want info in a more concise format, I just use one of my bookmarks (like the one above) and change out what I need manually...

I'm got my suspicions as well. A seller sold a set of Designer Princesses on Apr 4th for $3800 then sold another set on Apr 12th for $3200. Both buy-it-now. Why drop the price $600 a week later?

I noticed this very thing in regards to the Mary Poppins Beloved Tales. For months it was hovering around 40-50 and then one seller has now listed the pin 3 times, initially up around 140. The market hung around there for a few pins but it seems it's come down a little, but still higher than the initial average.