Thread: I Don't Get It Apparently, +$1K for a Double Duck?

The mishap is plausible. Once while putting in a bid for a Schwinn Paramount (bicycle) headtube badge I typed a comma instead of a period. I won the headbadge needless to say. My max would've been something like fifty bucks but I ended up being the 'winner' at around $120.00. I explained the situation to the seller but had to pay the freight nonetheless. I wasn't trying to get out of it BTW, it had nothing to do with the seller and was my obligation. If I was the selller of that DD I would expect to get what the razor finished at and I assume ebay and Paypal will want their percentage of the 1K.

From what I'm told, It may be a Shill Bid, but the whole 1k think is just too odd, no one bids 1k on that razor, I don't care who you are, There's something fishy going on. I'll probably talk to that seller over the weekend, and will post for your reading pleasure.

U R Right Gugi about ever finding out, I reported what I thought was shill bidding one time, I was absolutely sure, Ebay said, Nope, No evidence. I learned my lesson then.
I buy new razors, Just got a nice new Black Bismarck from SRD, Great Shaver.....
It's way too easy to get burned on Ebay, one way or another. I think your better off buying new, or getting the fixer uppers. Stay away from Minty Vintage stuff. Something's going on....

I don't think a shill bid is plausable. If you are having a confederate drive the bidding on an auction the last thing that you want is for the shill to be the high bidder. So you would try and gauge the bid to be just under what the market would bear. As you say no one would bid 1K for a DD. OTOH if two bidders figured that no one would bid that much and they both really wanted the razor, foolishly bid that amount to insure that they wouldn't be outbid, it could happen and maybe it just did.

I thought of that too to begin with. The shill was brought to my attention, My theroy is one guy, who lost the other night to the same guy, bids 1k in the hopes of locking in the razor and thinking no one in their right mind will bid over 400 or something, right.
Here comes bidder two, miskey's and types 4k, instead of 400, and there you have it...

Or he's reslisted it this morning for $400 Buy it now:

dubl duck GOLDEDGE STRAIGHT RAZOR MINT & IS SHAVE READY - eBay (item 160337219019 end time May-30-09 08:11:07 PDT)

I must be misunderstanding the concept behind shill bidding. I thought a shill bidder bids in cahoots with the seller to drive up the price artificially for the sole benefit of the seller and royally screwing the legitimate buyers in the process?

I don't see that happening with Altima55 since he sells so many razors as it is. What would be the motivation to shill bid any of his razors? There are plenty of legit buyers who compete and pay for his razors.

I'm not saying that anyone has insinuated that shill bids happened on this listing, I'm just saying again, maybe I'm understanding a shill bid incorrectly.

No one would bid high for the sake of bidding high if they had no tie to the seller. No one. Why would they? They'd had to have an IQ of 10 to do that arbitrarily.

Chris L

Shill bidding is whenever a seller bid on his own item through a proxy.

Possible motives:

1. The seller did not set a reserve, so shill bids the reserve.
2. The seller wants to drive up the price, so the shill bid aims to come in second.

(2) is more often the case. I find it suspicious that the auction ended last night for $1025 and this morning the SAME razor is listed for $400.

This is not a shill bidding situation.

Firstly Altima55 is a truly reputable seller.

Secondly, the timing is completely wrong for shilling.

The way ebay shilling works is the shill places a winning bid, revealing the 2nd place guys max bid. The shill then reverts his bid in violation of ebay's terms, and places a new bid just below the mark's max bid. Ebay will get mad and possibly lock the shill's account, but he doesn't care because that account is a throwaway account, generally created for purposes of shilling that one auction or at most two.

This is not in any way what happened with this auction. Yes we do have an account (d***h) with 0 history placing a very high bid, but his bid was not retracted. Instead, a bidder with a decent amount of history comes by and puts in a much higher bid, and also does not retract it. This is simply an ebay newbie getting stupid, and apparently an ebay veteran making a typo.

The lesson from this is (a) don't be stupid and (b) use a sniping service so you can fix your typos before they hit ebay. Those last few adrenaline-fueled seconds of an auction are not a good time to depend on your fingers to be fumble-free.

Edit: The relisting doesn't raise any red flags for me in the circumstances. I guess altima55 could have offered it to the second place guy for his $1000 bid or the third place guy for whatever his max bid was, but this one was blown so deeply that I suspect rerunning it is the only fair option.

I guess I'm missing something here. If the seller stated it was a mistake and it sold for $300-something then why is he selling that same razor today? Did the actual winner back out? What am I missing here? Looks like the seller got hosed for the fees on a $1K sale that he couldn't collect on.

Well said!!!

Originally Posted by ChrisL

Only he would know whether he restores (including de-pin and re-pin) ALL of his razors, most or some, but......yep, it's my understanding, unless I'm wrong, that most of his razors are de-pinned and re-pinned in addition to being restored to some degree.

I've shared my opinion on this before in other posts over time, but I have no problem whatsoever with even complete overhaul, regrind, re-pin, heck, even re-gold wash or re-etching if it were done to a razor. Clearly many of our valued members here do jaw dropping work that I enjoy looking at more than I'd care to say..

However, assumptions about someone or their work can turn into widely held beliefs when that person may not disclose (even if completely unintentionally) all info related to an item's condition. I believe in an Ebay auction or classified, that any razor that's been restored, reground, re-pinned, etc should be indicated as such and specifically in regard to what types of alterations were performed. Personally I would take that into account in regard to the value I would place on such a razor.

Analogy:

A vintage but fully restored (fabricated parts, matched paint, overhauled engine, etc) high value collector car might bring a very large sum at an auction.

A vintage mint original condition vehicle of the same type with no alteration of any kind is in a different class entirely.

Super-rich car nuts want to know what they're paying hundreds or thousands or even millions of dollars for in the vehicles they collect (those types of car auctions are interesting to watch). If it was assumed based on description that a vehicle was mint and 100% original and such a buyer found out it was restored, I don't think the rep of that seller would last in those car circles or at least that seller would have to adopt full disclosure in future sales.

Yeah yeah, I'm talking about apples and oranges in values with my analogy. The value of the million dollar cars warrant full disclosure while lowly straight razors, who cares?; Oh, rather than lowly, I mean up to $1,000 straight razors.

Chris L