Online Auction

[Texans Coins]

Question

 

First, before I ask my question, I would like to share a find that I made today. I was making a deposit at work today and I found a $1 Silver Certificate. It has been through the wringer, but a fun find, none the less.

 

So, this has happened to me twice in the past month with two different sellers, both with feedback of 500 or less. I bid on a coin, lose the auction and receive a second chance offer less than an hour later. To me, it seems like the seller or a friend bid up the price and then offered it to the second highest bidder (me) at their maximum bid. Has this happened to anyone else? I have received second chance offers, but 3-5 days later once the seller has exhausted trying to get the winner to pay.

 

 

Marcus

 

See more journals by Texan's Coins

[Yankeejose]

Are these raw or slabbed coins. Does he offer the exact same coin with the same certification number? I have had it happen a few times- I guess it depends on how common the coin is and whether it would be feasible for the seller to have duplicates. Sometimes I go back the next week and see that he selling the same grade coin(different cert number), same grading company. My assumption was he sent in multiples of the same coin that came back with the same grade. If the seller is offering the same coin with the same cert number than it does kind of sound like shill bidding.

[jgenn]

Marcus, check the authenticity of the offer very carefully. If it definitely came through your Ebay message box it should be Ok. I have received these in the past to my personal email -- with very convincing looking details -- but they were fake second chance offers from fraudsters. ~jack

[Merlin8*]

Marcus,

 

I've received quite a few second chance offers but always at my max bid, never the winners. If that were to happen, I would not accept the offer as a rule. I usually don't even consider second chance offers unless it's from a seller I've done a lot of business with in the past.

 

Larry

[jpcienkus]

I've acted on 2nd chance offers only once and I purchased the coin at MY bid.

 

In this case, he's offering you the coin at the highest bidders price an hour after the auction ends, I would be very suspicious. It's up to you whether you act on it. If the price was right for the coin, I might act on it, but if not, I would not do it.

[coin928]

I've had this happen to me a few times, and how I respond generally depends on what was bid by the 3rd highest bidder, or the opening bid if there were only two bidders. This also assumes that the winning bidder has truly backed out, and that the item offered is exactly the same item as in the original auction.

 

If my max bid was just a bit higher than the 3rd highest bidder (or the opening bid), I might just accept the 2nd chance offer no questions asked.

 

If however, the seller is offering a 2nd chance at my max bid and the 3rd highest bidder was substantially lower than my max bid, I get suspicious. In that case I generally counter with an offer to pay what my winning bid would have been if the highest bidder had not bid at all. In other words, the maximum bid of the 3rd highest bidder plus the bid increment. I've never had one of these counter offers accepted, which makes me even more suspicious.

 

Caveat emptor!

[coinsbygary]

So far I have not had any second chance offers but once I gave a second chance offer to another bidder because the winner refused to pay for the item I was selling. I tried to contact the winner but had no response. I eventually opened a case on the winner and offered the second chance to the next higher bidder. That bidder accepted the offer but asked for an explanation which I was more than happy to give.

Gary

[jackson64]

Happens quite often---ebay is absolutely rife with shill bidding.

 

Many of the very large sellers--say ones with 10,000+ feedbacks...they may also have a half dozen or more smaller accounts with 500, ..800,..or even 1,000 feedbacks...all that they need are seperate IP addresses and email accounts to pull it off. You may need a few credit cards too so that the paypal accounts don't overlap.

 

Some things that burn me about ebay is it used to be easier to catch it when it happened--now ebay blocks bidders ID's if you look at the items "bidding history". Also, many of these shillers will make it a "private listing" whatever that means. What I do know it means is that all bids and id's are completely blocked.

 

I know it is fact because many of these sellers items bounce up again under a different seller--but the item location or even photos are the same...also I've been in a bidding match for a coin with 1 other bidder. After being outbid for the 3rd time I looked at the limited info I could about the other bidder---60+% bidding activity with just this one seller AND--get this........54 bid retractions in the past 90 days.

 

Bid retractions are used when someone like me bids a max bid and lets it ride---the shill will keeping bidding up the price against my high bid in small increments. Once he passes my max bid and becomes high bidder he then retracts just his last bid ( the one that is 1 increment above mine) and his other bids that drove the price to my max are still standing.

 

I recently caught/suspected I was being shilled and did a bid retraction of my own ( a seperate occasion from my last example). I got a very nasty email from the seller demanding to know why I retracted my bid and sobbing about making a living and the costs when someone retracts a bid. I sent her back a response asking her why she was so upset when the "other bidder" still had their bid in at just $2.50 less than my bid?....needless to say she knew that I was on to the fact she was shilling and her message was an accidental shopwing of her hand---she had to eat the coin because she essentially ended up buying it from herself and paying all the fees...It showed up again in her inventory about 2 weeks later when I was perusing for slabbed coins in that series ( and I'm 99% sure it was not returned by a real buyer--PF69UCAM's are pretty much exactly what you bid on from TPG's)....anyhow,

 

I NEVER accept a second chance offer and try as I am able to not get shilled---which is not foolproof because of ebay's weak protection against it---like I said, the multiple accounts for big sellers doing volume is easy for them and if they buy and sell with all of them--the shill % stays low enough to fly under the radar--but you know it when you see it ( and second chance offers an hour after auction end is a BIG red flag.)