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Interesting ebay auction with doubtful WWI items


pfrost
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I didn't want to put this into the fake and reproduction thread, because I don't have enough information to to form an opinion one way or the other. Still, some interesting things about this auction-- http://cgi.ebay.com/WWI-Balloon-Corp-Lt-Le...#ht_2166wt_1098

 

1) I believe that this auction is being offered by the individual who recently wrote a book about WWI balloon wings and insignia that has been mentioned in a number of threads elsewhere. While I don't have the book myself, in general I have not heard good reviews about it at all. So I guess one would have to take it on faith. Something that I have started to see again (after what was a hiatus of some years IMHO) is the ploy of using a "book" to peddle pieces of a person's collection-- That process always had the ring of a nice circular argument, in that "I am an expert because I wrote a book" and my wings are legitimate (and more valuable) because they are in a book, a book that I wrote to highlight my collection -- :ermm:

 

2) I find it interesting that this auction offers rather poor quality pictures of the individual items being offered for sale. If I was so inclined, I guess I could email the person and ask for better pictures (frankly, I am not so inclined). The pictures are poor quality of what I would consider the "meat of the auction" i.e. the wings, insignia, and patches, and the rest of the auction is taken up with scans of some paperwork and a photograph or two. Kind of weird, you would think that the best pictures would be of the good items, no? For the amount of money that this person is seeking for the wings, I would expect a better attempt to show them off. He does manage to plug his book, however (hey, see point 1 above!).

 

3) The price has already reached very high level based on the bidding of just a couple of people (some other things about the bidders give me pause). One always wonders why two experienced ebay bidders would enter into a bidding war some 3 or 4 days before the end of an auction and drive the price so high??? And with one bidder that has almost 50 bid retractions to their name!

 

Just some food for thought.

 

Patrick

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I didn't want to put this into the fake and reproduction thread, because I don't have enough information to to form an opinion one way or the other. Still, some interesting things about this auction-- http://cgi.ebay.com/WWI-Balloon-Corp-Lt-Le...#ht_2166wt_1098

 

1) I believe that this auction is being offered by the individual who recently wrote a book about WWI balloon wings and insignia that has been mentioned in a number of threads elsewhere. While I don't have the book myself, in general I have not heard good reviews about it at all. So I guess one would have to take it on faith. Something that I have started to see again (after what was a hiatus of some years IMHO) is the ploy of using a "book" to peddle pieces of a person's collection-- That process always had the ring of a nice circular argument, in that "I am an expert because I wrote a book" and my wings are legitimate (and more valuable) because they are in a book, a book that I wrote to highlight my collection -- :ermm:

 

2) I find it interesting that this auction offers rather poor quality pictures of the individual items being offered for sale. If I was so inclined, I guess I could email the person and ask for better pictures (frankly, I am not so inclined). The pictures are poor quality of what I would consider the "meat of the auction" i.e. the wings, insignia, and patches, and the rest of the auction is taken up with scans of some paperwork and a photograph or two. Kind of weird, you would think that the best pictures would be of the good items, no? For the amount of money that this person is seeking for the wings, I would expect a better attempt to show them off. He does manage to plug his book, however (hey, see point 1 above!).

 

3) The price has already reached very high level based on the bidding of just a couple of people (some other things about the bidders give me pause). One always wonders why two experienced ebay bidders would enter into a bidding war some 3 or 4 days before the end of an auction and drive the price so high??? And with one bidder that has almost 50 bid retractions to their name!

 

Just some food for thought.

 

Patrick

 

Patrick,

I think your concerns are well founded. Good eye.

Terry

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:think:

 

So just what is the penalty for fraud these days?

 

The two balloon pilot badges in that group are fakes, and by trying to pass himself off as an expert it is obvious the seller is an unrepentant con-artist hoping to exploit the confidence of, in his own words, a newbie to WWI aviation collecting.

 

The same holds true for at least one of his well known co-conspirators living in central Florida with approximately 2059 positive eBay feedbacks but who also has almost 50 bid retractions against his name! Through bid manipulation, that scoundrel quickly got the price up to an even $4,000 but since then he is lying low… at least for now.

 

It will be interesting to see if that group ever hits the reserve price; however, the wing badge collecting fraternity is not as small as some people might think. Bad apples eventually get bitten; therefore, we are hopeful that the word will spread quickly about the scam those two fellows are hoping to pull off… and if necessary to the proper authorities.

 

.

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Cliff asks: "So just what is the penalty for fraud these days?"

 

Not high enough is the answer IMHO. I actually know a couple of collectors who contacted the FBI and tried to initiate investigations of con artists for knowingly selling faudulent artifacts. They were basically told "Are you kidding? Do you know how much stuff is on our plate?" Authorities view these kinds of crimes as "victimless". The relatively small amounts of money contribute to that. These con artists are ripping people off for a few thousand dollars each time in most cases so it doesn't make the radar for prosecution. These guys are basically free to do whatever they want. They can always say they bought it with the belief it was real and were told it was real. Ebay gives them a big world in which to operate. Our only defense is knowledge.

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teufelhunde.ret
3) The price has already reached very high level based on the bidding of just a couple of people (some other things about the bidders give me pause). One always wonders why two experienced ebay bidders would enter into a bidding war some 3 or 4 days before the end of an auction and drive the price so high??? And with one bidder that has almost 50 bid retractions to their name!

 

Just some food for thought.

 

Patrick

There you have it - puzzle solved! :thumbsup:

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Manchu Warrior
3) The price has already reached very high level based on the bidding of just a couple of people (some other things about the bidders give me pause). One always wonders why two experienced ebay bidders would enter into a bidding war some 3 or 4 days before the end of an auction and drive the price so high??? And with one bidder that has almost 50 bid retractions to their name!

 

Just some food for thought.

 

Patrick

Since this information is only available to the seller I am just curious how you know the one bidder has so many bid retractions? I am only asking because if there is away to find out who is bidding on items other than my own I would like to know how to do it.

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ditto above ... how does anyone know who has any (or how many) bid retractions? Where is that stat kept so people could tell?

I'd be interested in that. People know all the little "in" and "outs" of the "goings on" at eBay,and with the exception of Toolhaus,

I've never been able to find out anything much.

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Garth Thompson
Since this information is only available to the seller I am just curious how you know the one bidder has so many bid retractions? I am only asking because if there is away to find out who is bidding on items other than my own I would like to know how to do it.

You can't identify any bidder by name however if you go to the auction, open bid history and put your cursor over the ebay ID, open that and you will see the 30 day bid history of the individual.

Garth

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Manchu Warrior
You can't identify any bidder by name however if you go to the auction, open bid history and put your cursor over the ebay ID, open that and you will see the 30 day bid history of the individual.

Garth

It worked and I appreciate the information. Thanks!

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It worked and I appreciate the information. Thanks!

 

Ebay seems to change its method of doing research on an auction from day to day, making it harder and harder to follow who is bidding on what. Still, you can use some basic ebay tools that still remain to learn a bit about who is bidding on an auction.

 

If you go click on the "bids" part of the auction (it is a link just under the current price), you can see a list of bidders. Of course, the names are scrambled but the feedback is there. If you click on the individual link you can find some information about the bidder, such as the number of bids they have made, the % of bids they have made to an individual seller, and the number of bid retractions.

 

If you are really lucky and have some general ideas about who is bidding (and you happen to know the ebay name of the person), you can do a search by bidder in the search engine part of ebay and see if the feedback numbers match up. Because it is possible (if unlikely) that two people will have the same number of feedbacks, you can do a bit more searching to find out if they are the ones bidding on other items. It is sometimes tricky and sometimes not very accurate, but with care you can usually find some clues of what you are looking for. This is all available information that ebay makes public, you are not breaking any rules.

 

Patrick

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I know the guy in question, and he has a lot of good stuff in his collection, but also a lot of bad. Not being a wing guy, I'll go with the flow here on that one. He isn't the type of guy that would purposely defraud you, but he is "an odd duck" who once, he makes up his mind about something, it's good in his mind no matter what anyone else says. Just based on my gut and 50 + years of collecting, plus the opinions stated here, I'd leave this one alone. Also, as stated above, there looks like there could be some shill bidding going on.

 

John

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