30 Sep
2010
30 Sep
'10
12:48 p.m.
Yes. ?The difference is that when everyone is in the
same room, a
veteran bidder can spot signs, recognize familiar faces, etc. ?This is
not as easy with a virtual auction.
Another veteran bidder can also bid very discretely - and I am not
talking about the winks and noserubs that work in televisionland.
Still another bidder can get a friend to do the bidding (completely
legal and ethical) using his original paddle. Yet another bidder can
move around the room between bids, and get lost in the crowd.
In a real live auction with serious players, it can be very difficult
to see who you may be up against.
The one thing that I will praise EBay for (and being how much I hate
Ebay, that is saying something) - at least the auctioneer is
impartial. Just a few weeks ago I was at a radio estate auction where
the auctioneer missed a number of my bids, and banged the gavel a bit
too quickly for his buddies benefit.
When there are 3-4 bidders with 0-1 feedback that jump
in and nudge
the price up in several increments to exhaust the max bid of the
present winner, that's not the same as someone with dozens of hundreds
of feedback _on similar items_ coming in with one bid that blows past
any competition.
Lets be honest - how often does that really happen? We have all seen
it once or twice, or maybe a bunch of times if you live on Ebay, but
what percentage of the auctions are really like that?
This is the "overblown" aspect I mentioned - for every auction you
describe with these potential shills, there are *thousands* that are
normal.
One more thing - experienced shills do not register a day before their
target auctions, but hang around for weeks before. Inexperienced
shills will register right before an auction - and they are the ones
that get caught.
--
Will