Re: [MOPO] The second bidder on the grassy knoll

[Kirby McDaniel]

JRS wrote:
As Kirby mentioned, it was probably Bruce taking his
thousand-auctions-per-week "private" that caused some concern

*****>>>>>
No, no.  That's someone else's comment, not mine.  I have no idea.
But this whole thing about Phil Wages' bidding is LAME, as far as I'm
concerned.
It's a tempest in a teapot.
I have no idea WHY ebay is doing what they're doing, but that they're
doing it at all
just about sums up my opinion of them: arrogant.
Kirby

On Apr 7, 2005, at 2:01 PM, J R wrote:
While I in the past I have publicly lamented the extremely high prices
that Bruce often manages to get in his auctions for lots of common
everyday posters, I have no reason to believe that Phil Wages as a
bidder on Bruce's auctions had anything to do with that. Phil's own
post pretty much explains everything to my satisfaction.
Look, if a seller were going to set up "shill accounts" to regularly
use to drive up the bids on his auctions he certainly wouldn't set
them up using the names of his own employees now, would he? No one is
that stupid. Certainly not Bruce or Phil.
Actually, the "smart" thing to do would have been for Phil to bid
using an account registered with eBay using a false name and address.
After all, the con artists and scammers on eBay do this everyday --
it's easy to do and eBay can't seem to prevent it. If he had done that
then no one (including eBay) would ever have realized he was bidding
on Bruce's auctions. The fact that Phil bid with an account registered
in his own name -- up front and honestly with no attempt to hide the
fact -- indicates that he wasn't trying to pull anything or engage in
shill bidding.
As for Phil having some kind of advantage by being inside of Bruce's
operation, that's absurd. Phil can't see what the maximum bids of the
other eBay bidders are. Neither can Bruce. So what possible advantage
could Phil have if he bids on one of Bruce's auctions?
The only impropriety would be if Phil was bidding on Bruce's auctions
to deliberately push up the bids of other people with no intention of
actually buying the poster if he wins it. That's shilling. But Phil
wasn't doing that. As I said, nobody sets up a shill account using
their own name. Duh.
As Kirby mentioned, it was probably Bruce taking his
thousand-auctions-per-week "private" that caused some concern.
Although Heritage has always done this and nobody seems to complain
about them. In a private auction you can't see the eBay Names of the
bidders you are competing with and so you have no way to know if a
"shill account" is out there, bidding on hundreds of items, pushing
prices up across the board. This is one of the main objections I have
to the Heritage auction format and I did criticize Bruce publicly when
he decided to go with private auctions for his stuff last year.
This is why we don't have private auctions on MoviePosterBid and never
will. The bid history and the Member Names of the bidders will always
be visible both during and after the auction. Of course, the Member
Name is just their "handle" -- not their real name -- but at least
with public bid histories you can see what's going on and if there is
really something funny happening, it makes that easier to detect.
But given that Bruce didn't do anything that Heritage also does... or
anything that hundreds of other power-sellers do everyday -- I have to
conclude that it was his very public and strong criticism of eBay on
their own internal forum that really caused them to crack down on him.
-- JR
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael B" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2005 13:35
Subject: [MOPO] BRUCE vs. EBAY ------------ the stock is down

as of this writing, 2:15 NY time, ebay stock is down about 1.25.  i
found
that humorous in the spectrum of things.
i am reading all the posts about bruce.  too many are not being
objective
with the facts.  i am a collector, and have purchased from  bruce.
but his own
posting of his  "interested"  friend-worker-bidder bothers me.  and
as a
different MOPOer reminded  us......bruce's expensive auctions do not
disclose the
bidder's  identities.  WOW.
Bruce likes controversy, but i am sure he never expected  this.
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