Hi all,

I'm unhappy to report to you the case of a shill 
bidder/seller setup on ebay. All accounts have 
been cancelled by ebay safeharbor and these 
include the seller (womengem@my-deja.com) and 
bidders (cel-collector and ayashi-san). You may 
know the seller as joyka who sometimes posts 
here. I'm very sorry to the bidders who might 
have spent more because of this incident. 
Additional information can be found on the Anime 
Chaos cels forum. The URL for the thread is:

http://pub41.ezboard.com/fanimecelsforumfrm1.showM
essage?topicID=458.topic

and you can learn more by doing a little research 
on ebay.

This brings up a question that I think is 
important to share with members of the cel 
community "how do you tell if somebody is shill 
bidding?" (shill, by the way, means to fake an 
auction. A bidder is planted in order to start a 
bidding war and raise the price of the item).

For one thing, the bidder bids on one seller's 
auctions exclusively -- and almost never wins. 
The shill bidder has low or no feedback (or 
feedback only from the seller). The bidder might 
bid and win one or two other auctions just for 
show. The shill bidder also bids on auctions that 
don't make any sense. That is, auctions for 
multiple shows are being bid on -- a lot of 
people might collect Tenchi Muyo and Cowboy Bebop 
cels for instance but would every bidder also go 
for Kenshin, Fushigi Yuugi, Flame of Recca, CCS, 
etc? (and from only one seller when there are 
many auctions for most of these shows everyday). 
Unfortunately, ebay doesn't allow just anyone to 
view email addresses like they used to and this 
had been helpful in the past to determine the 
validity of a bidder's identity. I would 
recommend emailing a legitimate seller (someone 
you know) whose auction was bid on by this person 
and ask him or her for assistance. I'm certain 
that most people take this very seriously and 
would be willing to help out. 

If you suspect someone of shill bidding, please 
report it to ebay's safeharbor:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/rulesandsafety/43010002
.html

One thing that I am thankful about is how we help 
each other out in this community. I know that 
this is a competitive hobby but I appreciate 
those people who point out inconsistencies and 
lies. We all can be vulnerable to our desire to 
own a certain cel. It's nice to know when 
somebody picks up junk cels at a con or a store 
and passes them off as "I'm taking a bath on the 
price" when really the markup is 500 percent. 
This kind of selling is not illegal like the 
aforementioned ebay auctions so clearly are, but 
are still blatant cases of lying and unethical 
behavior.

I'll put up info. regarding shill bidding on my 
page but I'll have to do it when I return from my 
trip. If anybody has anything to add, please post 
it or e-mail me directly. I'd be happy for any 
feedback and assistance.

Sincerely,

Wendy