Shill bidding on the bay?

[barney 59]

I just know Ebay is a very scary place that is a cess pool for professional scammers that will continue until they hook a fool. It use to be you could spot a scam posting on Ebay. Nowadays it's getting harder and harder to tell and Ebay does not or will not police it before it happens. They expect the buying public to tell them when something is not right. Sorry but I can't go through a million posting per day to look for those obvious scammers. I use Ebay for items under $100. At least if I'm scammed I haven't lost much.

I don't find that at all. If there is something I want I post a search so that I am notified when something like the thing I want shows up. Often people want way more than I think the value, often I get outbid but usually,eventually, one shows up in acceptable condition and I get it at around the price I was hoping to pay. There are maybe millions of items on ebay at any one time, how do you police that? There are some scams for sure and though I haven't been scammed I have backed away from a good many items because it didn't feel quite right. I think the scams are a very small percentage considering the vast amount of transactions that are going on on ebay. I've bought quite a lot of things on ebay and haven't been burned yet. The alternative is what we had before. Very few places to buy --maybe one vintage dealer in your town or maybe none-- and almost nowhere to sell so you got dragged over the coals trying to get a fair price from a dealer or a pawnshop. Ebay kind of levels the playing field, you get a fairly good idea what things are worth (maybe your things) by seeing what people are actually paying.

[bmac]

The term "fair price" is next to meaningless.... A fair price from an individual selling an family instrument may be $200 while the same instrument being sold by a dealer may be $500. Both may be fair prices... The dealer stores the instrument sometimes for many months, may make minor repairs, advertises the instrument and pays a salesperson who deals with customers often many times to sell the instrument for what the store owner feels will be a profit.

If a buyer feels the price is "unfair" then the buyer simply does not buy... from whoever he feels is overcharging. It really is that simple. There is even a name for it... It is called "capitalism".

[houseworker]

Finished at $2,111 this time round, and same other bidders at the sharp end. Still looks like a decent buy to me.

[Annette Siegel]

Finished at $2,111 this time round, and same other bidders at the sharp end. Still looks like a decent buy to me.

We will have to agree to disagree here...pretty much looking at just buying it for parts/case...after seeing the neck was spliced. Could've dealt with the messed up top and broken curl...but the neck break is a very big deal imho. There was a bidder that bumped it up that didn't bid on anything else but his item...still makes me think.

Annette
www.LivingTreeMusic.com

[houseworker]

There was a bidder that bumped it up that didn't bid on anything else but his item...still makes me think.

The bidder concerned placed a bid of $2,000 on the mandolin two days before it finished, when it was standing at $1,300. Three hours later they increased their maximum bid to $2,100. The same person had bid $1,800 the first time round (five hours before the auction closed). You've no way of knowing whether or not they bid on anything else, since eBay only lets you see bids with the same seller. That bid history looks at least as genuine as yours, certainly not the typical pattern you'd see for shill bidders.

The spliced neck wouldn't have bothered me, I know Gibson sometimes made them that way, and that splice looked factory original to me.

[Eddie Sheehy]

I bumped it up to $1,506 and was promptly overtaken...

[Annette Siegel]

And whats also funny is...when I got into the office this morn....they sent it to me by accident! Mmmm... maybe I should re-list it