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Marvel Preview 4 and 7 -- EBAY SHILLING ON STEROIDS

Started by Jaydogrules,

247 posts in this topic

paul747

paul747

Posted
Posted

Man your out of control. You did similar stuff with hawkman 4 set the entire GPA on fire after your 9.0 sale. ( new high) Your aggresive. You have had multiple listings after big sales where you cover the serial numbers on the slabs. Do what you have to do to make a buck but your overaction to a couple of posts is crazy.

 

Point is after GPA is knocked up, there will be legitimate sales because some people don't realize that the prices are manipulated at some point.

 

Why would you have auctions and cover the serial numbers?

 

Go ahead and add me to your list for a law suit and I hope you got some cash saved from your pumping and dumping your going to need it.

 

It just seemed like the entire point was to show the excessive shilling on those books and you took it to a new level .......... Why ? Do you really think he is trying to depress the market?

 

I have watched you on the boards and eBay you have sent me pms with crazy new GPA offers right after some new high sales. Man do what you need to do but I can see where some people might view you as shady. And your responses definitely don't help you much.

 

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Jaydogrules

Jaydogrules

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Wow...this thread devolved rather quickly. Now I'm not sure who's nerve got hit, but mess is certainly flying.

 

:gossip: It's the guy who is using multiple ebay user ID's to sell the same books to defraud the market into believing these books have literally quadrupled in price in two weeks, and is now using overly inflammatory language within the thread trying to make it go poof after I declined his request to delete it about ten minutes after I originally posted it.

 

-J.

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paul747

paul747

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I am all for anyone making cash if they choose to sell their books. And I am sure he makes legit sales. I just did not see his original eBay I'd in any of your examples and can not figure out why he is so defensive when clearly jays original examples had some major shilling.

 

I thought the post was just showing some shilling and it just has spiraled.

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paul747

paul747

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Who's covering cgc numbers? Look at my completed listings, not one has a "covered" cgc number. Paul, You're another fool and hater who didn't get the book you wanted. Please.
Who's covering cgc numbers? Look at my completed listings, not one has a "covered" cgc number. Paul, You're another fool and hater who didn't get the book you wanted. Please.
hater really ? Come on man have you ever had an eBay listing with a blanked out serial number .? I always get the books I want man. I only commented because of all of your hating that did not seem like it was directed at you !!!
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paul747

paul747

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I did not think anyone was trying to nominate you. You have a right to double your money and sell whatever you want period. Good for you. You where just being really aggressive towards the op for no apparent reason. I did not think he was pointing you out at the start.

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Mishmashman

Mishmashman

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I did not think anyone was trying to nominate you. You have a right to double your money and sell whatever you want period. Good for you. You where just being really aggressive towards the op for no apparent reason. I did not think he was pointing you out at the start.

 

Alright, if no ones nominating me then stop talking about me. Thank you.

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Jaydogrules

Jaydogrules

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I did not think anyone was trying to nominate you. You have a right to double your money and sell whatever you want period. Good for you. You where just being really aggressive towards the op for no apparent reason. I did not think he was pointing you out at the start.

 

I wasn't. He called himself out. Evidently he believes I am so eager to buy one of these books that I need to depress the entire market just to get them down to my "price range". Never mind my sig line that shows my actual collector focus on mid/high mid grade SA keys.

 

I'm still relatively new here but I do not believe that a person can be nominated based solely on their ebay shenanigans. Though I am still curious to know why a seller would use several different usernames on there to sell the same book from one day to the next. It's impossible to know which of the sales are legitimate because he has so many ID's he has been using. I didn't know those were his originally and I do not believe all of my original examples were his. I believe other sellers shilled their auctions, and, based on his posts here, I now know that he has been using phony "buy it nows" under multiple IDs to skew GPA.

 

Everyone has a right to make a living and to sell books, but I'm sorry, I just find this tactic unethical and I wasn't aware that pointing out potential ebay scams on the boards was a bad thing. There's an entire conversation going on right now in the Copper forum about another ebay seller and a bogus TMNT 1 he is trying to pass off.

 

 

-J.

 

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Sqeggs

Sqeggs

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Hello Boardies,

 

Over in the "Wow Marvel Preview 7 Goes Through the Roof" thread (or something to that effect), there has been a lot of intelligent debate as to whether or not these books are "for real" or just two more "flash in the pan" movie books with no legacy of comic book collector interest with temporary wildly inflated prices.

 

My concern with this thread is not either of those issues. However, based on that discussion I decided to take a closer look under the hood of the ebay activity of these books. I work with statistics and follow market fluctuations within the real estate industry for my "real job", as well as do fraud analysis on a nearly day-to-day basis.

 

And from what I can see, both of these books are being artificially "pumped" by a litany of unscrupulous people who are attempting to manipulate market data and create a perception that these books are "hotter" than they really, and going through the roof" in two ways:

 

1) By using a blatant shill bidder (or multiple shill bidders) within their auctions to create a de facto "reserve" that is well over FMV (Fair Market Value) that is almost always the under bidder in the auction, hoping for a snipe bid from a legitimate bidder at the end, and

 

2) By listing phony "buy it nows" as "closed sales" at obviously inflated prices, that are not supported in any way, shape, or form by legitimate "buy it nows" and/or auctions (meaning the prices are often a multiple of 200-500% of what established FMV of other recent, non fraudulent sales have been). A lot of these fake "Buy it Now" listings have been caught and removed by ebay already.

 

 

The following is my reported findings:

 

I will begin with Marvel Preview 4.

 

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=251589775679&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2565

 

In this example you will notice shill bidder b**e with 0 feedback, got the bid to $400. Shill bidder a**l with 3 feedback was then outbid by the seller's next shill account, o**s, who has only ever bid on this particular seller's items. You will notice that the last real bid was for $244.99, before the final (apparently) real bidder at the end was shilled all the way up to more than $650, thus suggesting that the "real" FMV of this book was in fact around $250, which is about what all of the other legitimate sales for this book have been going for raw, with a graded 9.0 closing at $326 just a few days ago:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MARVEL-PREVIEW-4-CGC-9-0-OFF-WHITE-1ST-STAR-LORD-GUARDIANS-OF-THE-GALAXY-/331263549623?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item4d20d8a0b7

 

 

**Note For the Uninitiated: in order to see each bidder's bidding history with any given seller, you need only click the bidder's partially anonymous user name.**

 

There is one sale in a 9.8 by mycomicshop that was for over $2,900, that looks to be an outlier, and unfounded price point with no prior high grade copies going for anything near that. There is also a "closed sale" as a "buy it now"...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MARVEL-PREVIEW-4-CGC-9-8-NM-MINT-1ST-STARLORD-GUARDIANS-GALAXY-NoRESERVE-6-7-271-/251601289110?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item3a949aff96

 

...that was reported as being shilled in an auction just two days earlier, which evidently resulted in the seller canceling all the bids just one day before....

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MARVEL-PREVIEW-4-CGC-9-8-NM-MINT-1ST-STARLORD-GUARDIANS-GALAXY-NoRESERVE-6-7-271-/261542446693?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item3ce5250665

 

 

On to Marvel Preview 7.

 

I will begin with the auction that was also canceled by the seller (different seller user name, but different seller?) after reports of rampant shilling were made to ebay. It should be noted that the same shill ebay account was being used to artificially inflate the bids for this and the aforementioned canceled auction for Marvel Preview 4.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MARVEL-PREVIEW-7-FIRST-APPEARANCE-KEY-ISSUE-HIGH-GRADE-CGC-MOVIE-COMIC-/111417497752?pt=US_Comic_Magazines&hash=item19f1001898

 

...and both shilled auctions were mysteriously canceled at the same time.

 

The next obviously shilled auction occurred on this "high grade" raw copy:

 

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=360999724568&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2565

 

The underbidding shill in this auction is e**4, with 4 feedback, who had 100% bidding activity with this this seller until I came onto these boards in the other Marvel Preview 7 thread and pointed that out. Subsequent to that, the shill account placed a couple of throw away bids in a couple other auctions, which has led me to believe that these boards are being read by that particular seller.

 

It should also be noted that the prior high selling priced for a "high grade" copy was only $499...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MARVEL-PREVIEW-7-1ST-ROCKET-RACCOON-GOTG-SUPER-HOT-1976-VF-8-0-/251591504088?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item3a9405b0d8

 

 

....and that was as a "buy it now" just a few days before this auction closed. I would put the real FMV of that book at around that price, perhaps less, since auctions tend to yield lower sales prices than a typical "buy it now".

 

As with the Marvel Preview 4, there is one bizzarely high, apparently outlier sale that has no basis in past sales results in also high grade:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=155285&item=121387386036&rt=nc&print=all&si=T6Np1tB5%2FZYDnmTPautXEt6zbyY%3D

 

Another boardie has claimed in the other Marvel Preview 7 thread that he knows the buyer of this book personally. I however find it odd, especially for such a high dollar book, that the buyer did not leave any feedback for the seller, nor did the seller for the buyer after this transaction. That leads me to believe that the sale is either bogus, or either the buyer or seller did not perform.

 

 

While shilling and fake "buy it nows" on ebay are certainly nothing new, I found it fascinating to see in action with these two books. You can literally see the fraud and attempts at market manipulation happening right before your very eyes. The fact that these books have so recently caught the attention of the market makes them particularly vulnerable to fraudsters as the collecting market at large tries to get a handle for what FMV really is for the books. But at the same time, it makes the shenanigans easier to spot as well, if you have no life and too much free time at the office like me, to compile the data and disseminate to my fellow boardies.

 

And if it spares even one boardie the pain and aggravation of being shilled into an artificially high bid in a fraudulent auction on either of these books, or perhaps another, then it will all have been worth it.

 

Be careful out there. (thumbs u

 

-J.

 

 

Great work!

 

Let's hope the mods are wise to the shiller's attempts to use inflammatory language to get the thread poofed.

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