What does everyone think of ebays new bidders disclosure. The auctions do not display ebay id's anymore just bidder numbers. Personally I think this is very silly. What made ebay so successful was there realism. Now auctions just look to me like a shill bidding paradise. Most of us active ebayers can regonize shill bidding on auctions prior to this new ebay policy, which in turned provided safety for not being taken for a ride. Now with all bids practically annoymous , well time will tell!!! I guess this is better for sellers, as ebay fees and paypal fees are nearly 10% of the final sale price. Feel free readers to respond maybe give me a different view point, Dan

Dan. I have not read about this yet but it does sound like this is the answer they have come up with to hide the shilling problem. Personally, I think this may get a lot of bidders to think twice about putting in max bids and getting into bidding wars if they do not know the bidder they are up against is legit. Jim.

I had this happen to me near the end of an auction but haven't seen it happen again.
The point was brought up that it may "encourage" shill bidders as the id's aren't shown but there's a VIEW part of the BID history to show "bid Patterns" of the bidder. On the fence on this for now as not in effect to really have an honest opinion.

When does this go into effect? I just looked at eBay, and the bidder's name was still shown on the auction page.

I think it's a bad idea. I'm not completely sure that I understand their thinking behind this change, but I can't see it as being beneficial. Also makes it tough to actually meet people on eBay since they don't have a name anymore, just a bidder number.

As time moves on, eBay loses more of it's "small business" roots.

I read a book about the founding of eBay a couple of years ago that was written with the assistance of eBay's founder. It was really interesting to see how they all fought to keep eBay small in the beginning. For the first couple of years, eBay was run by a small group of people in a tiny office with cheap furniture and no individual offices. But, as more people joined, they were constantly urged to expand and buy out their competition.

Sorry to get off topic there!

Earl

Earl,

What was the name of the book and was it only about eBay? Sounds interesting.

Andrew

I had to go look it up, but it was called "The Perfect Store" by Adam Cohen.

It was actually listed in the business section, but it was written more like a biography. It's written in a very informal style. Lots of stuff most of us never knew about eBay, even though most of us have been using in for many years. I just stumbled across it and thought it looked interesting.

Look for a copy on Half.com. You can probably find one fairly cheap.

Earl

Here's a link to the official memo from ebay:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200701081004422.html

Good points:

(1) It will be a lot more difficult for people who intentionally follow my bidding and try to outbid me to do so.
(2) It's more like a silent bidding auction where everyone shows their cards at the end and the high bidder wins.

Bad points:

(1) Lower overall final prices since if I know that a certain person is bidding on this card, I will automatically increase the amount that I would otherwise be willing to pay (with several cards from a set, i.e. PSA 6 C56's from 2-3 years ago, PSA 3/4 C57's from 1 year ago, I knew that I would have to dig deeper to win any of those)
(2) Shill bidding is even easier to do since following the bidding patterns of Bidder A vs. B vs. etc. is more time-consuming

Remember that this only comes into effect at $200 and above. The winning bidder is still revealed. For me, I don't know yet if it will change my bidding habits or not.

I just saw it first hand on eBay, I hate it! I do miss seeing who was bidding on what. I don't want to think that the high bidder could be some zero feedback punk just wasting everyones time.

Andrew

I think some sellers didn't understand this before they started shilling away. This is an item I was watching, went in to bid and saw this, look at the bidding activity with this seller:

Bidding Details


Bidder Information
Bidder: Bidder 12
Feedback: 10 to 49 • 100% Positive
Registered on eBay: Between 1 and 2 years
Item description: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bids on this item: 2
30-Day Summary
Total bids: 5
Items bid on: 4
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 60%
Bids to unique sellers: 3
Bids in unique categories: 1
Bid retractions: 0
Bid retractions (6 months): 0

Maybe this new system is actually going to curb shilling. I just checked in on another item I was watching, the high bidder has a 53% bid activity with the seller. Hmmmmmm?