Why no PWCC thread? 0

[Sam T]

I don't understand how one of the world's largest trading cards seller (PWCC) could be accused of fraud by the world's largest collectibles dealer (eBay) and that a forum dedicated to card sales wouldn't wanna discuss it.

 

Personally, I don't see any reason to believe eBay. I sell books regularly (not a dealer, just an amateur) and I definitely see bids on my auctions from accounts that look like they're probably fake. Short of IP logs that prove the shill bids came from PWCC's computers, I don't see how eBay can back up their accusation. The idea is that there are people entirely uninvolved in asale that have a reason to shill bid. A person might shill bid on a trading card because they have 10 of em they're planning to sell. I could place a bid on the card, and if I win, no big deal. The small loss for overpaying this time will be made up over time because overpaying on eBay pushed up the value of the 10 copies I originally had.

 

 

eBay has means, motive and opportunity to promote shill bidding. In fact they probably have more incentive than the sellers themselves. If I put a charizard on eBay, a person could maybe get another $50-$100 by shill bidding it up. But that pushes the value up and even though eBay only gets a small cut of that one sale, they're getting small cuts of thousands of charizards per year. Big card dealers have their hands in thousands of sales but ebay is recieving commission from MILLIONS of transactions. Ebay actually has said they're responsible from over a billion transactions per day. Collectibles dealers MIGHT be able make a couple thousand dollars via shill bidding but a platform that promotes and facilitates widespread shill bidding has made eBay BILLLIONS of dollars.

 

 

The idea that a seller might shill bid to make a little bit more money makes cents. But a platform designed to encourage and protect shill bidders makes dollars. We need an auction site without automated registration. We need a bunch of platforms where a human has to have a conversation with another human before they can open an account. We don't need the most accounts, we don't need the highest numbers. We need honest marketplaces and ebay ain't that.

 

 

Good luck out there, folks. Don't trust platforms or corporations

[Deha88]

Because pwcc has been shill bidding forever and finally got caught.. that’s all there really is to it. Nothing we can do about it, eBay put their foot down. 

[Yeahiwasder4dat]

Feel like it was common knowledge that they did, considering some of the absurd prices things went for compared to all other sales history.

[Sam T]

On 8/27/2021 at 1:04 PM, Yeahiwasder4dat said:

Feel like it was common knowledge that they did, considering some of the absurd prices things went for compared to all other sales history.

Then why were folks on this forum recommending them VERY recently?

 

Do a forum search for PWCC. This forum has not been saying they're shill bidding. This forum has been promoting them.

 

 

Do ya'll understand the logic behind the fact that someone shill bidding doesn't actually have to be in cahoots with the seller?

 

 

If I have 10 copies of a book, then I can shill bid on your auction of that book and it actually boosts the value of my copies.

[Yeahiwasder4dat]

Someone shill bidding that doesn't know the seller takes quite a risk to try to pump the comps on their own item. Defects, or getting stuck with it. Wouldn't make a lot of sense. Sure, selling with PWCC is fine. I'm not going to buy from them though lol.

[Sam T]

On 8/27/2021 at 1:33 PM, Yeahiwasder4dat said:

Someone shill bidding that doesn't know the seller takes quite a risk to try to pump the comps on their own item. Defects, or getting stuck with it. Wouldn't make a lot of sense. Sure, selling with PWCC is fine. I'm not going to buy from them though lol.

uhhh this entire paragraph seems to take place in an alternate world where graded cards don't exist...

 

the point is that the label turns collectibles into a standardized and financialized asset. If I have 100 copies of a card and place a bid that's a little over the FMV, I might not win it and if I do, I just pushed the value of the 100 other copies up. So I might be overpaying by 5% for one card but I might have pushed the value up 1%, meaning my collection went up by more value than "lost" by overbidding.

 

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining it right but this is just sort of a generalized process of inflating the value of an asset but applied to eBay and the graded card market.

[Yeahiwasder4dat]

On 8/27/2021 at 6:42 PM, Sam T said:

uhhh this entire paragraph seems to take place in an alternate world where graded cards don't exist...

 

the point is that the label turns collectibles into a standardized and financialized asset. If I have 100 copies of a card and place a bid that's a little over the FMV, I might not win it and if I do, I just pushed the value of the 100 other copies up. So I might be overpaying by 5% for one card but I might have pushed the value up 1%, meaning my collection went up by more value than "lost" by overbidding.

 

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining it right but this is just sort of a generalized process of inflating the value of an asset but applied to eBay and the graded card market.

Except that people normally disregard the one off sales like that. If 20 base set 9 Zards sold for $1500 yesterday, and one sold for $1800 no one's going to give a mess. Your one buy for over fmv isn't going to change the market. Same with one selling at $1200 if all the others sold at $1500. Unless you manage to shill bid them all, or have an item that doesn't have any competing listings, your purchase is just a drop in the bucket.

[TrayKnight]

On 8/27/2021 at 9:30 AM, Sam T said:

I don't understand how one of the world's largest trading cards seller (PWCC) could be accused of fraud by the world's largest collectibles dealer (eBay) and that a forum dedicated to card sales wouldn't wanna discuss it.

 

Personally, I don't see any reason to believe eBay. I sell books regularly (not a dealer, just an amateur) and I definitely see bids on my auctions from accounts that look like they're probably fake. Short of IP logs that prove the shill bids came from PWCC's computers, I don't see how eBay can back up their accusation. The idea is that there are people entirely uninvolved in asale that have a reason to shill bid. A person might shill bid on a trading card because they have 10 of em they're planning to sell. I could place a bid on the card, and if I win, no big deal. The small loss for overpaying this time will be made up over time because overpaying on eBay pushed up the value of the 10 copies I originally had.

 

 

eBay has means, motive and opportunity to promote shill bidding. In fact they probably have more incentive than the sellers themselves. If I put a charizard on eBay, a person could maybe get another $50-$100 by shill bidding it up. But that pushes the value up and even though eBay only gets a small cut of that one sale, they're getting small cuts of thousands of charizards per year. Big card dealers have their hands in thousands of sales but ebay is recieving commission from MILLIONS of transactions. Ebay actually has said they're responsible from over a billion transactions per day. Collectibles dealers MIGHT be able make a couple thousand dollars via shill bidding but a platform that promotes and facilitates widespread shill bidding has made eBay BILLLIONS of dollars.

 

 

The idea that a seller might shill bid to make a little bit more money makes cents. But a platform designed to encourage and protect shill bidders makes dollars. We need an auction site without automated registration. We need a bunch of platforms where a human has to have a conversation with another human before they can open an account. We don't need the most accounts, we don't need the highest numbers. We need honest marketplaces and ebay ain't that.

 

 

Good luck out there, folks. Don't trust platforms or corporations

My guess to why Ebay put their foot down and banned PWCC is pretty simple......Complaints. Ebay have to receive thousands of complaints from potential buyers every year about PWCC's selling tactics and at some point this will begin to push these buyers elsewhere (away from Ebay), so in the long run they would begin to lose buyers and huge amounts of revenue. It's definitely a business move....not moral. 

Of course PWCC shill bids.....you would have to be from another universe not to know this. They sell thousands of cards every year and do you really believe all those sells are straight up sells and not in some way manipulated by PWCC.

[bpc3qh]

There's been a ton of discussion about this on sports cards forums (e.g., blowout's forum), and the macro points are: (1) PWCC has been shilling forever, and it's a problem; (2) eBay actually did this because PWCC was about to leave anyway for its own platform, and (3) eBay is unlikely to crack down on shilling much beyond PWCC.

[Sam T]

So no one believes that eBay itself has a shill bidding problem? That it might not be seller specific. I really think this is sorta eBay blaming an outgoing client for their own problems faults.

 

Have ya'll been selling a lot recently? A lot of the accounts that bid on my stuff seem...odd. They'll have one weird auction up for 12 years for an item no one wants, no verifiable transactions but have TONS of positive feedback.

 

I think if you look at how ebay actually works for everyone, not just PWCC it seem clear that they might not be innocent but eBay is definitely guilty. I'm not going to stop selling on eBay, I literally don't have any other option, but that doesn't mean I have to lie to myself about the platform.

[bpc3qh]

On 8/28/2021 at 8:51 PM, Sam T said:

So no one believes that eBay itself has a shill bidding problem? That it might not be seller specific. I really think this is sorta eBay blaming an outgoing client for their own problems faults.

That's exactly what's happening here. It's a problem throughout eBay, and eBay is largely unwilling to fix the problem, except when it involves a company that's about to leave the platform to start its own platform.

[Sam T]

On 8/28/2021 at 9:14 PM, bpc3qh said:

That's exactly what's happening here. It's a problem throughout eBay, and eBay is largely unwilling to fix the problem, except when it involves a company that's about to leave the platform to start its own platform.

I think ebay is about to take over the whole damn thing...or it already did. they're gonna offer a bunch of free information services that will slowly be slipped behind a paywall. So we'll have one massive vertically integrated monopoly gatekeeping almost all collectible sales....fuuuun!

[KJK714]

I'm not taking sides with eBay or PWCC. But here are my observations against ebay. (I could have observations against PWCC but thats not for this post)

PWCC has started the premier auctions (very high end collectables) on their own website, and not using eBay.

And they have already been building up their in house platform because they always wanted to be independent of eBay.

eBay of course knows all this. So WHY NOT try to tarnish PWCC's reputation while they still can, after all, eBay is a direct competetor to PWCC.

Just food for thought.

 

P.S.

Shill bidding ALWAYS existed in EVERY platform, modern day shill bidding was probably invented on eBay.com as a whole.

[revat]

Ironically, one card I really wanted was in a PWCC shill auction, it “sold” kinda high (but not ridiculously), then was relisted by them a few weeks later, then “sold” again for almost the exact same price.  I was hoping they’d relist it, but now they’re blocked.  And it’s not expensive enough for them to list on their own auction site (so far). 
 

im not enthused about giving them money, but seems pretty tough to find it elsewhere.  I guess I’ve lost the choice...

[Sauce Dog]

First, I 100% would never ever bid on their auctions with their known history (now more so than ever since they are totally in charge of policing their own platform), but with that said, I decided to try them out via their fixed price Marketplace since a few of the Magic The Gathering cards I saw on their now-banned Ebay store were removed and relisted on their own platform for very low prices (on consignment - so no shill price increases....or so I thought).

The marketplace buying experience is one of the worst I've ever dealt with. Period.

Currently, you CANNOT buy multiple cards off the marketplace and have them all combined to ship together. Once you click a 'buy now' button on the marketplace it immediately pushes you to a finalized invoice, no checkout/cart system you add items into, and gives you the shipping for that single card (and for us Canadians that amount is $25us per card). I spoke with customer support and they said combining orders was never programmed in at all but they might consider it for the future. So if you want to buy a single card ever, then the experience is fine, but anything more than that and you are going to have to jump through hoops.

The solution that was suggested to me (by another user, customer support didn't know how to make this happen and tried to get me to pay shipping x4 - in fact when I showed them their own website that showed combined International rates they said all that information and more of the site was still out of date...so it does say in the FAQ you can combine your orders, that is not the case when it comes down to it. Auctions might be different, but I only tried with Marketplace) was that when I purchase each card instead of selecting to have it shipped to me I instead set it to be added to the PWCC Vault service (where they store your cards for you in their warehouse with insurance). Once all the cards have been moved into their vault archive under my new account I could then request a mass withdrawal of all my cards and they would be shipped together to me. Note that in order to use the Vault service you have to pay a fee that is a % of each cards market value as well as other service fees. For me these fees 'only' amounted to an extra $6us per card due to the low prices I bought them for but anyone buying cards that are hundred of dollars are going to be hit harder. Regardless, this just seemed like a way for them to slap on additional fees and many additional steps over the course of a few days for something that is by default built into every other checkout system online. I'm a web developer and there is zero chance anyone building a custom new online store experience would 'forget' to add a way to buy multiple items at once.

The prices for these consignment items were good, the dashboard and overall branding of the system looks good, but the user experience, questionable fees and crazy hassle of this all means I for sure won't ever be using them again. 

Edited September 23, 2021 by Sauce Dog