Does this look suspicious to anyone?

[jimbo_707]

This All-Select #11 sold in a no-reserve auction on eBay just 6 days ago for $3,076.00.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/All-Select-Comics-11-CGC-9-0-First-Appearance-of-the-Blonde-Phantom-/181280335815?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item2a352667c7&nma=true&si=ICkykpJCgoMMX3N5nvk%252F2AYtvFg%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

 

The seller, chalcusx, relisted it with an opening bid of $4,500.00.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/All-Select-Comics-11-CGC-9-0-First-Appearance-of-the-Blonde-Phantom-/181289144711?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item2a35acd187

 

A situation like that makes me suspect shill bidding.

[mrmyst]

Funny, I noticed that seller's books and thought the same thing...s/he has a lot of high grade expensive books for sale.

[thunsicker]

But tends to ask about 25% above current values.

 

EDIT: I take it back. It seems his prices now are around 80% over current values.

[jimbo_707]

According to eBay, the sellers name is Patrick Lenehan. Does anybody know him? Can anybody vouch for him?

[mrmyst]

I've spoken to him before. Won't vouch for him per se, but my experience is he does in fact have books of that caliber.

[cheetah]

I believe he is one of the folks who won some of the Thrillings off ComicConnect a couple of years ago then tried to sell them on ebay. I don't know if he ever manged to sell any of them tough.

[cheetah]

Looking at the first ebay listing, it looks like he had a reserve on the book and it did not sell. The listing says he has relisted it.

[jimbo_707]

Looking at the first ebay listing, it looks like he had a reserve on the book and it did not sell. The listing says he has relisted it.

There was no reserve on it - I had been watching the listing. The final bid showed up in green as a "winning bid"; that's why it threw up a red flag for me when I saw it relisted. It's more obvious in this list:

 

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&LH_Complete=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=200&_fpos=&_fsct=&LH_SALE_CURRENCY=0&_fss=1&_fsradio=%26LH_SpecificSeller%3D1&_saslop=1&_sasl=chalcusx&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_ipg=50

[Silver Surfer]

Didn't you just buy those Spy Smashers?

[Doohickamabob]

It's always weird when an auction completes and then the transaction goes kaput. This happens waaaay too often on eBay. There were only two bidders. The first has 16% activity with the seller. The second (winning) bidder has 4% activity with the seller.

[jimbo_707]

Hmm...the winning bidder has a feedback score of 467, and chalcusx has a feedback score of 246. If the winning bidder has 4% activity with chalcusx, that mean they've had at least 10 transactions together if it's 4% of Patrick's transactions, a least 18 if it's 4% of the bidder's transactions.

 

Either way, for a transaction to go kablooey between eBayers with an established history doesn't look too good.

 

Here's one interesting article I pulled up on shill bidding. In at least one case there was apparently a ring; I guess a bunch of art dealers were trying to do one another a solid by bidding on each other's items.

 

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/06/biztech/articles/07ebay-fraud.html

[Badger]

It seems double-sleazy to me to price a book way beyond market and say you will give part of the theft to charity.

 

You can price your books the way you want but leave the poor charity out of it.