Charley, while there's no definitive way to detect shill bidders, a big hint is the feedback the bidders have. Someone with zero or very low numbers is a pretty good indicator. Especially with a seller that also has low numbers.
In this case, the winner of the original auction had zero feedback and as stated above, the car was back on ebay a few days later. This is a very good indication that the seller is using shill bidders.
Even in the last auction, there were four bidders with very little feedback. While the winning bidder had 567 feedbacks, the price of the car may have been driven up by shill bidding.
If you look at the winning bidder in the first auction (i***r), it sold for $47,000 but came back again a few days later. If you look at the second auction, _***e went up to $38,300 but didn't meet reserve. However, if you look at the seller's feedback, it sold to r***c (who didn't bid in EITHER auction) for a best offer which was under $45,500. Not impossible, but strange none the less.
But like I said, there's no way to know for sure, but it's a
HUGE red flag when people with little or no feedback start bidding. And of course, all of this may be on the up and up, but it's not what I would call the "norm" for ebay auctions.
As an aside,
HERE'S a link regarding the car when it was on ebay back in 2015. The ebay auction no longer has the pictures, but the important ones are still in the TC thread.
And as always, this is just my opinion and in no way does this reflect the opinion of the Camaro Research Group.
Ed
