Question for E-bay sellers

I have never sold a coin or anything else on E-bay but I have purchased
several, so my question. Can the seller see his high bidders maximum
bid? The reason why I ask is that in several instances in recent weeks,
after i've placed a bid, someone will come along and bid my max to
nearly the penny. If I've bid $49 someone will bid $48.99 and I'll win
the auction. If I've bid $12.75 someone will come along and bid $12.74
and I'll win the auction. ect. you get the schtick. This seems
especially true if there isn't a lot of bidding activity for the coin.
We all know that you can flip I/D's over there. One for selling if you
want, one for buying if you want. So I'm getting kind of suspicion that
my bids are getting 'run up' by someone in the know. This doesn't seem
to hold true for the more 'Hot Items' such as Gold or Morgans coins,
just the last second pounce by everyone, that we are all familiar with
and expect. But I'm running into it with the less popular Maples &
Kookabarras and even some of the comem's... So, can a seller see his
high bidders max??

Thanks
Lowell

On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 11:53:43 -0800, Lowell Kempton wrote:
I have never sold a coin or anything else on E-bay but I have purchased
several, so my question. Can the seller see his high bidders maximum
bid?

Nope. All we see is the same bid history you do, plus we can see how
many people have said "watch this auction". That's all.

The reason why I ask is that in several instances in recent weeks,
after i've placed a bid, someone will come along and bid my max to
nearly the penny. If I've bid $49 someone will bid $48.99 and I'll win
the auction. If I've bid $12.75 someone will come along and bid $12.74
and I'll win the auction. ect. you get the schtick. This seems
especially true if there isn't a lot of bidding activity for the coin.

All that means is that they bid a number, and your proxy-bid placed the
next higher bid above theirs, if your max bid allowed. So, say they
wanted to pay $12.75 for it, but your max bid was $20.00 - eBay's
bidding system places a proxy bid for as little over their bid as it
can, on your behalf, and you stay on top. If their max bid is above
yours, they go on top, and you get a "you've been outbid" email.

This is why sometimes you'll see the same person bidding apparently
against themselves in a bid history. You open at 10 dollars, max 20.
Some guy comes in, bids 12. Your proxy stays the high bid at $12.50
without you doing anything. And so on.

We all know that you can flip I/D's over there. One for selling if you
want, one for buying if you want. So I'm getting kind of suspicion that
my bids are getting 'run up' by someone in the know. This doesn't seem
to hold true for the more 'Hot Items' such as Gold or Morgans coins,
just the last second pounce by everyone, that we are all familiar with
and expect. But I'm running into it with the less popular Maples &
Kookabarras and even some of the comem's... So, can a seller see his
high bidders max??

Nope. You're just seeing the proxy bid process work as designed.

Dave Hinz

A shill can enter a very high bid to see what your bid is, then retract it,

then enter the lower bid. Even an honest person (such as myself)
can, if careless, miss entering the decimal point and see your bid,
then realise the mistake and retract.

Steve E.

Lowell Kempton wrote:

I have never sold a coin or anything else on E-bay but I have purchased
several, so my question. Can the seller see his high bidders maximum
bid? The reason why I ask is that in several instances in recent weeks,
after i've placed a bid, someone will come along and bid my max to
nearly the penny. If I've bid $49 someone will bid $48.99 and I'll win
the auction. If I've bid $12.75 someone will come along and bid $12.74
and I'll win the auction. ect. you get the schtick. This seems
especially true if there isn't a lot of bidding activity for the coin.
We all know that you can flip I/D's over there. One for selling if you
want, one for buying if you want. So I'm getting kind of suspicion that
my bids are getting 'run up' by someone in the know. This doesn't seem
to hold true for the more 'Hot Items' such as Gold or Morgans coins,
just the last second pounce by everyone, that we are all familiar with
and expect. But I'm running into it with the less popular Maples &
Kookabarras and even some of the comem's... So, can a seller see his
high bidders max??

Thanks
Lowell

"Lowell Kempton" wrote in message
...
I have never sold a coin or anything else on E-bay but I have purchased
several, so my question. Can the seller see his high bidders maximum
bid? The reason why I ask is that in several instances in recent weeks,
after i've placed a bid, someone will come along and bid my max to
nearly the penny. If I've bid $49 someone will bid $48.99 and I'll win
the auction. If I've bid $12.75 someone will come along and bid $12.74
and I'll win the auction. ect. you get the schtick. This seems
especially true if there isn't a lot of bidding activity for the coin.
We all know that you can flip I/D's over there. One for selling if you
want, one for buying if you want. So I'm getting kind of suspicion that
my bids are getting 'run up' by someone in the know. This doesn't seem
to hold true for the more 'Hot Items' such as Gold or Morgans coins,
just the last second pounce by everyone, that we are all familiar with
and expect. But I'm running into it with the less popular Maples &
Kookabarras and even some of the comem's... So, can a seller see his
high bidders max??

Thanks
Lowell

The person can bid a high bid and see your high bid by retracting their bid.
They then bid again knocking your bid up to your max. It's sort of against
eBay rules, but people do it all the time. See how many bids the person has
retracted by looking at their feedback page.
Report them to eBay. Did you tick somebody off? Is this one bidder who
keeps bidding you up?

Jonathan_ATC

On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:51:57 -0500, steve edwards wrote:
A shill can enter a very high bid to see what your bid is, then retract it,

then enter the lower bid. Even an honest person (such as myself)
can, if careless, miss entering the decimal point and see your bid,
then realise the mistake and retract.

Right. So that someone who does this a lot, would have many bid
retractions on their record. But how can I, as a buyer _or_ as a
seller, use that information to figure out who is shilling?

If you look at who is bidding and check their feedback,
near the top of the page is the number of bid retractions that
they have had in the last six months. So especially in your case,
where you keep getting bid up to your max, you should check who
put the next-highest bid, see if it's the same person for a given bidder,
and the number of retractions. Unfortunately you can't
tell the dates of retraction, unless you are Ebay God.

I think my number of retractions
is *gasp* 6 or so, cause for a while there I was bidding
on a pile of stuff from one seller, all really low-value stuff, so
I was zapping out 20 or so bids as fast as I could.

Steve E.

Dave Hinz wrote:

On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:51:57 -0500, steve edwards wrote:
A shill can enter a very high bid to see what your bid is, then retract it,

then enter the lower bid. Even an honest person (such as myself)
can, if careless, miss entering the decimal point and see your bid,
then realise the mistake and retract.

Right. So that someone who does this a lot, would have many bid
retractions on their record. But how can I, as a buyer _or_ as a
seller, use that information to figure out who is shilling?