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Two accounts.

Colin the Bear

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Do people really have two accounts on ebay to push up the bids on their stuff for sale? I'm beginning to wonder. :headscratch:
 
It's possible. It's one way to do it.

When shilling occurs, however, it's more likely that they just ask friends with accounts to push up the bids. Should the friend actually 'win' the item, they either then cancel the transaction or the friend pays and the unscrupulous seller then kicks the $ back to the friend.

There was a certain popular vintage mouthpiece seller who used this 'methodology' for several years back from around 2010-2016 or so. To inflate the market values of his wares.

Indeed in that period, the market values of vintage pieces shot up.

The seller stopped dealing in vintage 'pieces, and lo and behold....after a time the astronomical "sale prices"/market values of vintage mouthpieces actually dropped when those 'won auctions' disappeared.
 
Made one bid. Item sold after only two bids. Second chance offered. Get out of town. :fingerwag:
 
Made one bid. Item sold after only two bids. Second chance offered. Get out of town. :fingerwag:
As far as I'm aware, all of the auctions on eBay are timed, the highest bid at the last second wins, so it's usually best to just bid once to get you in the auction, then bid again in the closing seconds of the auction. The problem is, you can buy software to do this, so sometimes you're trying to beat a computer program to be last.
I don't think it matters how many bids there are, it goes by time.
If you really want something, you have to be bidding in the final minute, you'll rarely win an auction if you don't, someone will usually beat your bid by 50 cents at the 1 second mark.
I suspect that sometimes this is the seller with a second account or a friend of theirs so that they can auction the same product again and get a better price, because the final price that time will show in the stats for that item when it's auctioned again.
It's not easy winning auctions, I usually bid the highest price I'm willing to pay in the final 5 seconds, you'll only pay one increment above the second highest bid anyway, not the full bid you've entered. People get carried away though, I've often seen people bid higher than the "buy now" price just because they can't stand losing an auction.
 
I don't think that is exactly what @Colin the Bear is referring to, however.
I digressed a bit, but initially I was referring to his comment about the auction ending after only two bids, they're timed, so I was just pointing out that the number of bids is irrelevant.

Also trying to give him some tips, if you bid the price you're willing to pay early in the auction you'll always lose unless you've bid way too much, it's too easy for someone to just bid that little bit extra, perhaps as he suspects, it could be the buyer he's bidding against. If you bid $50 early on, you're setting a minimum price, immediately the buyer knows he'll get more than $50 and if they do have a second account, or a friend, they'll place a higher bid and drive the price up if no one else does, why wouldn't they?
Usually the bids reach a certain point early, say $20, and stay at that all week, people just place a low bid early to get a foot in the door, and don't bid again because all you'd be doing is driving the price up. Some just watch and don't bid at all during the week.
The real bidding starts in the final minute, something that's sat at around $20 for days might sell for $60 in the final seconds.
Bidding early just drives the price up prematurely.
The whole idea is to buy something for the lowest possible price, so you should bid what you're willing to pay in the final seconds and hope that your bid gets in with no time left for someone else to beat it.

Also, it does sound wrong to use "win" and "lose", but that's the terminology, so I don't know what the alternatives would be. :)
 
When a friend was selling things, (the detritus accumulated over the years, surprising what some people will buy), he wondered why sometimes a person would put two bids when no one else had bid against them. Then realised it was to discourage others from bidding a bit more than the opening price as they would expect to be outbid anyway.
So he used a second account to bid enough to activate that person's second bid.
 
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