Please explain the price of this marlin.

Gone now, it appears… or rather, does not… as it were…

I’ve seen some auctions on GB which do appear to have some bid-bot evidence; relatively innocuous guns going way over reserve and way over market price - but you don’t see the typical two to four repeating bidder names - always random bidders in a pile, always small increments which makes it appear like high traffic and high interest…

But I’ve never seen one go this far out of whack…

We also don’t see “collector speculation” drive ~10x value onto common rifles like this. But I’ve heard often of money laundering being done through auction sites like this. I even had an ATF investigation reaching one of the pistols I had bought online - the photos were being reused over and over for fraudulent listings which were selling in every auction at multiple times the market value - including the price I had paid for the pistol. The ATF only wanted confirmation from me that I still had the pistol. Recognition software was catching the serial number on the pistol repeatedly, indicating it was being bought and sold and bought and sold… for exceptionally high values ($700 pistol selling for $5-6k).

So when I see auctions like the one posted here, I can’t think of any other viable explanation.

I have gotten into a few bidding wars. One this fall I ended up bidding for a couple hours after the auction end time because of the 15 minute rule. Other times I've been prepared to bid up several hundred dollars on something and the other bidder gives up early and I end up getting it for much less than I was willing to spend.

I live in an area with few gun shops or shows, so when I really want something particular, the auction sites are the place to find it. I recently got a legitimately good deal on a stainless tikka T3 lite in 338 win mag. They do not make that chambering anymore and I could have looked for one at gunshows and pawn shops until I was dead and would have been unlikely to happen on one randomly.

My local dealer was telling me about getting into a bidding war for one of his clients. If you ask him to find a particular firearm he will set up his saved searches on gunbroker and try to find it for you. Well one of his regular customers was looking for some specific model of Colt anaconda and one turned up on gunbroker and he bid up on it several thousand dollars before he gave up. The next day he finds out the person he was bidding against was his own customer.

Patocazador said:

IMO anyone who bids for firearms in an online auction is a gambling addict or misguided. By the time you "win" an auction and pay all the add-ons, you haven't won anything.

Make a fair offer and let it go at that.

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That completely depends on how one goes about it. I am the guy that bids on items regularly but almost never wins anything. This is because I bid “low ball” and forget about it, I know if I won by a payment request. I might win 2-3 items a year from the 100+ I bid on but when I do they are generally insanely good deals.

mavracer said:

I see people say this a lot, do you have any proof or data or are you just repeating something you heard that sounds good?

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I’ve never heard or read this before. In fact, my previous post is the first time I’ve seen it written. Where have you seen people saying this?

Independent people reaching similar independent conclusions is something. But it is not proven fact. How did I get there?

Watching and recording some of the largest seller items which have the same bid names on different auctions always driving up price but never actually winning anything. So yes, I have data, but the quality of my data is questionable. Correlation doesn’t prove causation for my data set. The law of averages would indicate insane deals occasionally for both the bidder and the seller, which happens sometimes with the small sellers, but never the big sellers.

Honestly, I don’t care, bot or no bot. I put in what I’m willing to pay and I’m good with the results even if I don’t win. And I will never get into an on-line bidding war

Patocazador said:

IMO anyone who bids for firearms in an online auction is a gambling addict or misguided. By the time you "win" an auction and pay all the add-ons, you haven't won anything.

Make a fair offer and let it go at that.

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That makes no sense whatsoever. The only "add-on" is shipping and transfer fees. Which are often about equal to local sales tax. Bidding on auctions is no different from buying in a store. It pays to be an informed consumer, know what you're looking at and what it's worth. If I didn't buy from Gunbroker, I'd be in trouble. Slim pickings in my local shops.

I sure as hell "won" this one at $1300.



$1500 for a two cylinder FA sure felt like winning too.

Gunbroker is NOT the only online auction site for firearms. My Spam file is loaded with estate sales etc. containing guns. Add-ons for the auction house, sweetheart deals with shippers, etc. all jack up the bid price by as much as 35%.

CraigC said:

That makes no sense whatsoever. The only "add-on" is shipping and transfer fees. Which are often about equal to local sales tax. Bidding on auctions is no different from buying in a store.

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That depends on the auction. It’s not uncommon for them to not only charge the seller auction fees but the buyer as well. 15% with this outfit, is what I have to subtract from the “out the door” dollar figure I decide upon before I place my maximum bid.

Ru4real said:

Do you know that the major sellers have bots that inflate the bid price into a range and then quit bidding?

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I don’t know about any personally but I have seen sellers not only bid on equipment they are trying to sell, in order to “get things started”, I have also seen them “win” the item they were trying to get rid of, paying both the buyers and sellers fee, and still have the item to get rid of.

someguy2800 said:

My local dealer was telling me about getting into a bidding war for one of his clients. If you ask him to find a particular firearm he will set up his saved searches on gunbroker and try to find it for you. Well one of his regular customers was looking for some specific model of Colt anaconda and one turned up on gunbroker and he bid up on it several thousand dollars before he gave up. The next day he finds out the person he was bidding against was his own customer.

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Winning.

Ru4real said:

Watching and recording some of the largest seller items which have the same bid names on different auctions always driving up price but never actually winning anything. So yes, I have data, but the quality of my data is questionable. Correlation doesn’t prove causation for my data set. The law of averages would indicate insane deals occasionally for both the bidder and the seller, which happens sometimes with the small sellers, but never the big sellers.

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Occam's razor wouldn't a simpler explanation be that on a large site of people who are making money buying and selling guns that there would be more people that are trying to make money buying and selling guns and they're not gonna let something go for well under market value.
Also it would seem that large sellers would get to be large sellers because they sell stuff that sells.

Varminterror said:

So when I see auctions like the one posted here, I can’t think of any other viable explanation.

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My uncle spent like $25k in the late 90s having my step grandpa's 1953 International Harvester 3/4 ton truck professionally restored, decided he didn't like it because it drove like a brand new '53 IH 3/4 ton crude, rough and no AC and he sold it for about half what he had in it.
People with money do dumb things with it all the time lol.

ETA I can't think of anything worse than a 10,000+ firearm to use for money laundering.

mavracer said:

My uncle spent like $25k in the late 90s having my step grandpa's 1953 International Harvester 3/4 ton truck professionally restored, decided he didn't like it because it drove like a brand new '53 IH 3/4 ton crude, rough and no AC and he sold it for about half what he had in it.
People with money do dumb things with it all the time lol.

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What you described in that context is 100% normal - common, not unique, and a fact of life for any customization work. But it’s also completely different context than these dubious auctions happening.

“Getting more than market value” at auction is common, but there are documented money laundering schemes out there which utilize online auctions. Whether it’s guns, baseball cards, Star Wars memorabilia, etc… auction sites are chronic targets. If a 1975 Marlin 336 went for $1500, sure, two fools arm-wrestled their way to one of them, or some last minute sniper, paying $500-800 more than it’s really worth…

But in this instance, as with most of the money laundering auctions, the bidding history reveals it’s NOT a slight overspend, and it’s NOT two or three bidders driving 9-10, or 50x market value, it’s a lot of random bidders… Couple that with the obvious deceitful text of the auction and all signs point one direction… it’s not some dude spending custom money he knows he’s going to lose if he ever sells, it’s not some high school kid who gets schnookered into spending 50% over market value by a skeezy wheeler, and not a few bidders driving prices higher and higher until one cries uncle… it’s 10-15x more than the market value of an exceptionally common item, which inexplicably has broader market appeal and more bidders at EXTREMELY higher prices than any of the other half dozen of the same model on the same site at the same time…

Do some reading on it, it’s really pretty interesting how folks hide income in laundering schemes.

mavracer said:

Occam's razor wouldn't a simpler explanation be that on a large site of people who are making money buying and selling guns that there would be more people that are trying to make money buying and selling guns and they're not gonna let something go for well under market value.

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If that were the case, then the other 6 JM stamped Marlin 336’s on Gunbroker yesterday would have also been at $10,000. But they weren’t. Only that ONE listing of an unremarkable 336, identical to the others, was getting massive bidding traffic…

On a large site where people are trying to make money by buying and selling guns, running up one item to greater than 10x its market value doesn’t help anyone. A reseller will never recoup that overspend, and a consumer can see 6 others of the same rifle at lower cost, so there would have been no motivation to continue bidding once that one broke $600-800. But it ran to $10,000. “Internet access” doesn’t drive a $800 rifle to sell for $10,000. “Horse trading” by resellers doesn’t drive a single $800 rifle to sell for $10,000.

Really consider what you’re saying here - Occam’s Razor disagrees with your claim. The simplest explanation is NOT that a consumer would pick up and preferentially buy a $10,000 rifle sitting beside 6 other identical $800 rifles. The simplest explanation is NOT that resellers with intent to profit on their business would want that ONE Marlin 336 so badly that they will pay nearly twice as much as the sum total to buy the 6 others listed on the site at the same time yesterday.

When something looks nefarious, with no other explanation, Occam’s Razor suggests it’s likely nefarious…

Patocazador said:

Gunbroker is NOT the only online auction site for firearms. My Spam file is loaded with estate sales etc. containing guns. Add-ons for the auction house, sweetheart deals with shippers, etc. all jack up the bid price by as much as 35%.

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You’re fully ignoring capitalism and making generalisms which simply aren’t true. And certainly don’t have anything to do with an $800 rifle selling at $10,000.

The context of this thread is Gunbroker but it really doesn't matter whose auction service it is. You know these fees up front and bid accordingly. Sometimes you have to eat the fees just to have access to whatever it is you're bidding on.

Varminterror said:

Really consider what you’re saying here - Occam’s Razor disagrees with your claim. The simplest explanation is NOT that a consumer would pick up and preferentially buy a $10,000 rifle sitting beside 6 other identical $800 rifles. The simplest explanation is NOT that resellers with intent to profit on their business would want that ONE Marlin 336 so badly that they will pay nearly twice as much as the sum total to buy the 6 others listed on the site at the same time yesterday.

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You're going to have to forgive me there's two different claims here which can't coexist yours that this is money laundering and Ru4real's that it's bots or shill driving up the price on a buyer or mark two different crimes.
On the surface a shill driving up the price would be more plausible but would still require GunBroker's cooperation or paying fees when the bot wins is gonna be hard on business and it seem like a big risk if it were to surface.
money laundering in this case makes absolutely no sense. You don't money launder by over paying for a known value, you pay the going rate for something that doesn't really exist. Also it's the seller's account that does the laundering and the buyer may not even exist.

@mavracer - it doesn’t appear that you understand how money laundering works…

100% goes in dirty, a smaller % comes back clean. Makes more sense to me than some program acting up to spite its programmer.

Two booksellers had probably the only extant copies of a bad self-published book by an illiterate author.
Both their internet sales sites were programmed to find the current price for a book they had that was also offered for sale by other sites and bump their top asking price by a smidgen. The logic appeared to be "If it's worth X to company Y, we can get a X + a smidgen."
The book wouldn't sell, the robotic programs got into a loop of checking each and bumping their price, til the asking price topped out at $6,480.66 for a book I would not buy for a dollar. I have seen that happen before.

If there are internet pricing robots in the book market that compete by raising asking prices, why not bidding robots in the gun market?

Varminterror said:

@mavracer - it doesn’t appear that you understand how money laundering works…

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Well I understand that it's illegal so the last thing you'd want to do is draw attention to it. So paying 10X the value on a public website would be a terrible idea. Especially when you could just show buying 10 $1000 guns and nobody would blink an eye

Admittedly I have no personal experience in money laundering, but if I wanted to do so I don't think I would do it with an item that has serial number traceability and a paper trail left in the filing cabinet of the FFL.

mavracer said:

…there's two different claims here which can't coexist yours that this is money laundering and Ru4real's that it's bots or shill driving up the price…

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I think @Varminterror and I are saying same thing. Is it laundering or bots? Does it really matter once you recognize it’s not a fair game anymore?

If ida been wealthy, real wealthy, I’d bid on it. And expected the rifle to be delivered. Then I coulda give y’all a report. Mighta even let y’all fondle it for a fee if you come over.

I guess I don’t get the shilling as much. Because on a site as large as gunbroker there must be millions of bidders. Is it not so hard to think the stuff is actually bringing those prices? Some of the listings get thousands of views. Even if only 10% are interested that’s still over 100 people. Now I totally agree that marlin had some nefarious goings on.

mavracer said:

Well I understand that it's illegal so the last thing you'd want to do is draw attention to it. So paying 10X the value on a public website would be a terrible idea. Especially when you could just show buying 10 $1000 guns and nobody would blink an eye

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Again, you’re not acknowledging known money laundering activities which have been happening with auctions for decades… Art used to be the common smoke screen, but any semi-collectible object seems to work.