skeeterfogger
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How much you want ? Only way to buy. Bidding is for sure fixed with fake accounts swooping in and making sure item gets price.
Running up prices on gunbroker
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That's due to autobid, where another potential buyer has entered a max price above your three bid prices. See this link: https://support.gunbroker.com/hc/en-us/articles/221374368
JT-AR-MG42
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The above really only applies to the average seller.
The top tier sellers only need to use their reputation and photos to get top dollar.
The seller looking to protect his sale in a NR auction simply has a pal register and bid the price up.
If, by unlucky chance, the 'pal' wins the auction, the seller then files a NPB report to recoup listing and selling fees (between 5 - 6%)
and then re-lists the item.
As long as the regular seller doesn't push too far, GB tolerates it. They want more sellers and listings.
Same reason why I believe their search parameters have become so loose, more people looking at more stuff.
You can really only detect the shady seller several ways as a member.
Say you were watching and bidding on that Python sale of his.
His own shill bidder wins it, and you see the same gun re- listed two or three weeks later.
Once in a while, you'll even have the seller mention that the gun is a re-list due to a NPB, but not always.
Go check the feedback of the seller AND of the 'winner'.
If you do not see that the seller left a simple 'F' feedback with a statement of a NPB, then the
odds are pretty good the sale was questionable.
Fastest is to 'ask a question' of the seller on the re-list as to where the F rating is on that earlier sale.
Lack of response is your answer.
I've only had one non paying bidder in all of my auctions. I left the feedback and mentioned his GB handle in my text on the re-list.
Mine all start (and all sell) at the bottom of what I'll take.
I do really think we are discussing a very small percentage of GB sellers though.
JT
crestoncowboy
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I was also the op. And haven't answered anything. Only elaborated on the question. And I have not bid on anything in a year. (A 617... and I won that) I've bought three i think on there. Never sold. I was curious as to what stopped the practice. The shells and theoretical python were just examples.
So if one only did it occasionally they even get the fees refunded?
Also what does a reserve cost. If anything
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jmorris
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I don’t know what they do but in many auctions there is a buyers fee and a sellers fee. If one bids on an item they are selling, it’s not a wash. They have to pay both the buyers fee and the sellers fee and they still didn’t get rid of the item.
eBay will notice if you bid on a friends item more than once. When I was in high school there was a group of us selling auto parts that got banned for a while. We were selling stuff that would no sale because only a few people in the world wanted it. It was nice to be able to have a friend hit it until the reserve. That’s back when eBay charged listing fees, not final value fees. At that time if you listed a $1000 part for $1000 you had to pay like $25
just to list it. But a $99 start was $5. They charged by the picture too and bold and this and that. Man was it a good place to sell stuff. We were making money flipping parts and then buying designer women’s clothes at goodwill. But those dang listing fees could get you.
In my neighborhood 5 year old trucks are selling for what new last year model are selling for 90 miles away. Same idea, some people ask high, and if everyone does it, people get used to it. Its not price fixing if they go off each others list price, and not conspire together. The consumer has the choice to accept what they're seeing as normal, or do research. The success of dealers selling 8 year old Mazda's for $22K tells me what society want.
As far as keeping it highroad, what applies to cars, electronics, event, status and anything else you can pay for, also applies to firearms.
As far as keeping it highroad, what applies to cars, electronics, event, status and anything else you can pay for, also applies to firearms.
I thought about how eBay went down the toilet when sellers lost all protection and buyers got it all. I’m sure GB watched that and is taking the opposite approach. They loose a few buyers because people get made, but they keep all their sellers.
I won’t even look at eBay now because of how they treated me as a seller the last few times I sold anything.
I won’t even look at eBay now because of how they treated me as a seller the last few times I sold anything.
crestoncowboy
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Again it isn't about price or panics or anything in this particular thread. There are plenty of those. And I've actually said many times, that's free market. The thread though is just about gunbroker policy on tampering with auctions. (The conspiring together part) I'm not bidding, buying, selling, or even wanting a thing. And I've wondered it way before the current prices.
JT-AR-MG42
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GB has to refund those seller fees if they want to keep sellers and stay in business!
I'll preface this by saying I was once a NR bidder as well.
The main problem GB has is with the NR bidders, the shill sellers benefit from this problem.
As a seller, I can state in my text that NR bidders have to check in with me before bidding.
I can (and have) blocked them from bidding, but unless I watch every auction to completion
there is no way to keep them from mucking up the system by winning the auction.
GB could give sellers the ability to block all NR or non A+ bidders ahead of time,
but then all sellers would use it and there would be no new buyers getting onboard.
See the dilemma GB faces. As long they have no better vetting system for new buyers, they
have to deal with a sizeable percentage of NPBs. This means more refund credits to sellers, including allowing the spurious
sellers that experience a higher than usual number of NPBs to slide along as well.
It is the old double edge sword. Sheer volume helps them going.
I checked because I have never considered using it. 2% of the reserve price in addition to selling and listing fees.
That shows you they discourage it as well.
JT
crestoncowboy
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Yeah. No doubt. And I never meant to demonize the site. Or most sellers. I dont think I hinted toward that. . It made finding out of production or rare guns exponentially easier and faster. I use it more for price checking and browsing than buying or selling personally. I just had most of my wants in my safe before the site was around. Just curious as to how they operated.
oh, my mistake. In that case, I think its shill auctions in a lot of cases. Someone recently told me of an auction of 8lb of powder going for $1000. I just don't believe it, but I do believe people are driving up bid with fake/friend accounts, and just not following through with payment, in an effort to normalize inflated prices. Not sure if those auctions keep records of the buyers, but it would be hard to penalize scam seller if the buyer refused payment.
UncleEd
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This. Decide what your top offer is and then see what happens. Often
you'll get it but be only $5 above the next bidder and not your top bid.
crestoncowboy
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I believe it certainly happens. Over the years I've seen some odd things.
The case i used as an example (and just an example.. I wish now I hadn't used ammo....) Was buckshot.Something I dont even use as we have no rules against rifle hunting and no season for a shotgun only . I use buckshot for testing new guns just to see if they run it and I keep some for "just in case". My kids will inherit half of the case I bought this year most likely. If I wanted any palmetto has it in stock. For 150 less than the example I used sold for.
Another example was back when the sig 320 was newer I was interested in one. They were in stock anywhere. Buds/palmetto...all of them had them. I saw some plain ones sell for way more than a new one. All had the same picture/same background.... funny
I browse the completed auction 10x as much as I browse the current auctions. That's why I notice the weird ones.
And I also saw the birth of Ebay. I see the issues and what they have to try to balance. That's what got me wondering what, if anything gunbroker implemented.
But, in the case of gunbroker from what I've heard in this thread...
So long as the seller doesn't file the non paying bidder claim Gunbroker actually benefits from shill bidding. They get the fees they would normally get which are a percentage of sell price so the higher the bid the more they make and presumably the item would be re-listed anyway so they make the percentage twice. As long as this doesn't happen (or get spotted) enough to harm the sites traffic it is certainly not a bad thing for the Site.
If the seller does file a non paying bidder claim then they recoup some or all of the listing fee but may throw up red flags if they file too many. I'm sure the non paying bidder gets flagged but that's pretty easily circumvented by IP masking or simply making another account. IF gunbroker even bothers to monitor that. The only person who gets hosed is the buyer who almost got the good deal.
I wouldn't have thought there were that many non paying bidders. But again I don't sell there. That would certainly be an issue to contend with.
As far as autobid goes I like that feature. When Ebay first added proxy bidding it was a welcome addition I think.
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Yea I put in my top bid near the end of auction and then go to bed or whatever and see if I won later. Keeps me from getting caught up in the frenzy. If I see something I kinda want I’ll go in there and nudge it $5.01 a few times and see if I can get on top.
years ago when Ebay was still out of the mainstream but well established I bid on a few things, and was occasionally outbid, only to be contacted after the auction by the seller/EBay telling me the high bidder refused to pay. At the time this was supposedly people who got overenthusiastic, and bid more than they were really willing to pay, but having bad feedback didn't make you ineligible to buy. It would not surprise me at all if those people were trying to drive up sell prices to normalize higher than market sales on similar auctions. PayPal didn't like what I was buying, (gun related, we all remember that) seized my account, froze my money for a while and made EBay too hard to use when Paypal was the only option, so I stopped using it long ago, I don't know if they still allow this. I have never used the gun auctions for anything other than pics.
wiscoaster
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Gunbroker's published policies wrt to shilling: https://support.gunbroker.com/hc/en...ing-Price-Manipulation-and-Duplicate-Accounts
Of particular note:
Of particular note:
wiscoaster
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This thread made me recall one interesting auction I was bidding on and got outbid and was surprised to see the very same item relisted a couple days later. Now, most likely that was due to a non-paying buyer, but I suppose there's an outside chance of it being a shill account not detected and closed. I don't know the technical details of how they safeguard against shilling, but I guess all you can do is take them at their word and trust that they do try to prevent it. If you just stay away from new accounts then I think you can be fairly confident that you're not going to be competing against a shill account bidder.
crestoncowboy
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I had read that. And it says they try to stop accounts from the same person. But also says two people on the same computer shouldn't share passwords. So an IP watchdog is unlikely. It really rather vague though.
Its kind of like car makers voiding warranties for drag racing....while putting launch control and offering slicks. They don't want the bad press or liability. But want the good press and publicity.
Looks like they do nothing. Just say it's forbidden. Lol. That why I started the thread. Just a curiosity. But im not sure there is much they could do either. And I can certainly see the argument that protecting the sellers is a priority too. Volume is the key to the success of gunbroker. Plus they get paid even if someone shill bids to stop their item from bringing a stupidly low price. And get paid more if someone drives their own auction up.
Again I'm not blasting them. I may never bid on anything again. May bid tomorrow. Ive had good success on the few things I bought personally.
wiscoaster
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Probably intentionally vague because I got the exact opposite understanding of the policy statement. As I read it, two different accounts logging on from the same computer and bidding on the same item would be detected as shill bidding. That could be detected by cookies and/or a combination of IP and cookies. Two accounts at the same IP doesn't mean much of anything by itself with who knows how many single clients networked to the same IP through various network devices. But obviously they wouldn't publish the caution if they couldn't detect it.
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