Re: Shill Bidding of Test Equipment on Eprey

"D from BC" <myrealaddress@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:69apj3dkklm98iq4v8r03omfuaf3e1qu41@xxxxxxxxxx
Question: Are there holes in my theory? Can something like this
happen?

Yes, it can happen -- it's not really different than any "cartel" operation.
The reason it probably doesn't happen more often is that as soon a group of
people try to artificially drive up the price of a given piece of equipment,
there's a temptation for each member to just start listing the same items at a
little bit less than the "artificial" price (using a separate ID, of course)
and keep ALL the profit. I.e., a cartel is inherently somewhat unstable --
the greed that brought them together initially also serves to draw them apart
once they're successful.

You don't need to get a bunch of resellers getting together to participate in
shill bidding -- the more common (I suspect) example is an individual seller
who just creates, say, dozen shill accounts and uses them to bid up his or her
own items. With effort, you can manage many shill accounts, have lots of
"fake" auctions to build up their feedback ratings, etc.

If so.. I have more reason to call it Eprey.

The best defense is to decide what you're willing to pay and try to stick to
it when you bid -- don't let the "excitement" of the last few minutes work
against you. Searching for completed auctions gives you some idea of the
going rate, although unfortunately eBay doesn't keep enough history to let you
see if perhaps there has been some concerted shilling effort to drive up the
average selling price.

---Joel


.

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