The comment was from Claude Litton (aka The Phantom).
Shelly
----Original Message Follows---- From: Kirby McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Kirby McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MOPO] The second bidder on the grassy knoll Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 16:56:11 -0500
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: <[email protected]> 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. ifoundobjectivethat humorous in the spectrum of things.
i am reading all the posts about bruce. too many are not beingwith the facts. i am a collector, and have purchased from bruce.but his ownposting of his "interested" friend-worker-bidder bothers me. andas adifferent MOPOer reminded us......bruce's expensive auctions do notdisclose the___________________________________________________________________bidder's identities. WOW.
Bruce likes controversy, but i am sure he never expected this.
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