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A “shilled auction” is a listing where a seller, a friend of the seller, or another party with a vested interest in a card’s market price inflates an auction price by placing fake bids. It’s a practice that not only harms collectors but is illegal in many jurisdictions. Shilling = Bad. Understanding how to identify which auctions are being shilled can be tricky and takes some practice, but we’re going to give you the basics today and focus on eBay auctions. This guide will walk you through identifying the key indicators of shill bidding, teach you how to analyze bid histories, and suggest actions you can take if you suspect a listing has been artificially inflated.
How are eBay Auctions Shilled?
Simply put, shill bids are when someone enters bids on an item they don’t intend to purchase. In the best case scenario for the shill bidder, their fake bids will push the auction price up to the maximum bid price of a legitimate buyer. For example:
If Bidder A (Legitimate buyer) enters a max bid of $500 for a card that had a starting price of $5, they can win that item for $5 unless another bidder enters a competing bid. When auctions are shilled, Bidder B (Shill bidder) enters incremental bids of $10, $20, $40, $60, and $80. Bidder B has placed 5 bids with a maximum bid of $80. Since Bidder A’s max bid of $500 is higher than Bidder B’s max bid of $80, they are still the leading bidder. However, the auction price now sits at $80, rather than $5. As someone intending to shill the auction, Bidder B continues to enter incrementally higher bids searching for the maximum price that Bidder A submitted.
Important Items to Remember When Looking for Shilled Auctions
eBay is one of the few auction platforms that publish the bidding activity that enable collectors to evaluate whether an auction has been shilled. But as you start to explore the bid history, keep the following factors in mind:
Bids Are Ordered by Amount, Not Time Placed: When viewing eBay’s bid history, remember that bids are not displayed in chronological order. Instead, they are arranged by highest bid amount. This means that you might need to look carefully at timestamps to spot unusual patterns. I've even copied/pasted the data into a spreadsheet before and sorted by time to make the analysis easier to perform.
Max Bids Are Only Revealed When Another Bid Triggers Them: eBay’s proxy bidding system keeps a bidder’s max bid hidden until another bidder places a competing bid. When this happens, the price will jump up to just above the second-highest bid. If you see unusual bidding patterns where small, frequent increases reveal a user’s max bid, it could be a sign of shill bidding.
Bidders Data is Semi-Anonymized: eBay anonymizes bidders' identities by abbreviating them to a series of letters and symbols, but will include the bidders' feedback score in parenthesis at the end. Ex. A***P (112). The first and last letter don't necessarily correspond to a username.
Quick Reminder on Where to Find eBay Bid Activity
To access the bid history:
Open the listing page for any card you're looking to analyze.
Click on the number of bids.
Spotting Shilled Auction Listings
Collectors have two tools at their disposal when reviewing bidding activity while an auction is live to assess for shilling: i) Who is placing the bids and ii) How bids are being placed.
Disclaimer: Just because an auction might look like its being shilled doesn't guarantee malicious intention. Bidding activity could be explained by inexperience, overzealousness, or other factors.Who is Placing the Bids?
As we had explored above, eBay doesn't give us a direct link to a bidders' profile, but they do give us a bit of information that can give us hints.
Feedback: The bidders' feedback is included in the parenthesis and is our biggest clue. An experienced bidder will have a high feedback (100+), whereas bidders with low feedback (Less than 20) should give us pause. A 0 feedback bidder could indicate that the seller opened up a new account for the sole intention of placing fake bids on this item.
Feedback Score (%): The amount of feedback received appears in the bidder's name, but the Bidder Details also provides the % score for this bidder. Anything less than 98% should be a red flag.
30-Day Summary: There's a wealth of information in the handful of numbers ebay provides, but there are two in particular to focus on.
Bid Retractions: This represents the number of bids that were removed in the past 30 days. A shill bid that went above a legitimate max may attempt to be retracted if the bad actor doesn't want to be on the hook for the item.
Bid activity % with this seller: If a bidder has a lot of bidding activity, but it's all with the same seller, it could indicate that this account was created specifically to shill items being sold by the seller. This should be reviewed along with the bidding activity to determine if the activity is legitimate or not.
Reviewing How Bids are Being Placed
The biggest red flag to watch out for are the small incremental bids placed shortly after one another. The act of placing small incremental bids is referred to as "Manual Price Discovery". Manual Price Discovery looks like like: Repeated bids in small amounts over a short time (e.g., $3,400 → $3,450 → $3,500 → $3,550 within seconds). eBay's bidding systems, both mobile and desktop, make it super easy to raise your previous bid quickly.
I'd also draw a line around the threshold these bids are being placed. If a $10,000 item is listed at auction and there's a rapid succession of bids placed when the listing goes live that increases the auction price to $200, I'm not going to worry about that. If the same activity takes place that raises the price from $8,000 to $11,000, that's when I take notice.
What You Can Do if You Identify a Shilled Auction When the Auction is Still Live
Being aware that shill bidding exists and knowing how to review the bid activity are important. But once you're armed with that information, you should take steps to protect yourself and the hobby. While the listing is active, you have three options:
Report the activity to the seller: Message the seller to alert them of the activity. They have additional information as the seller about who is bidding on the item and may be able to verify your claims and cancel the bids. Slab Sharks for example, encourages collectors to reach out if they identify any suspicious activity.
Report the Activity to eBay: eBay maintains a much higher bar before they take action on a shilled listing. Unless there's a clear pattern, they'll defer to the seller to take action. However there's a "Report Item" button where you can submit an information around "Fraudulent Listing Practices".
Avoid the Auction or Proceed with Caution: Set a hard max bid and don't get caught in a fake bidding war. Track the seller - if their auctions consistently have suspicious bid activity, avoid them or consider only engaging with their buy it now listings.
Assessing Bid Activity After an Auction Ends
It's a good idea to implement this step into your research process as well. You should be aware of whether a market has been manipulated when you start looking at new listings. All it takes is a couple seemingly legitimate sales to set a benchmark price that card/player/set's prices anchor to. In addition to reviewing the bid activity we discussed above, you can look out for:
Cards Getting Relisted
If a card ends at a high price but gets relisted soon after, the “winning” bidder may have been a shill who never intended to pay. Sellers engaging in shill bidding often relist cards because the fake winner “failed to pay.” Luckily for collectors, eBay has opened Terapeak (eBay -> Sell -> Research -> Product Research) sales data up to all users which only displays sales that have been completed AND paid.
Ending Price vs. Recent Sales
Compare the final sale price with recent eBay, Card Ladder, or 130point sales. We released a guide walking you through how to value your cards if you need a refresher. If the auction ended significantly above market value, it’s worth questioning whether shill bidding played a role.
Report the Sale to Card Ladder and Other Sales Aggregators
If a shilled auction is falsely boosting market prices, report it to price-tracking services so it doesn’t skew market comps.
Final Thoughts
Shill bidding is a frustrating part of the sports card market and is an element all collectors unfortunately need to learn how to navigate. By carefully analyzing bid histories, bidder behavior, and post-auction trends, collectors can protect themselves from overpaying due to fraudulent bidding practices. Stay informed, stay vigilant, and don’t let shill bidders dictate your buying decisions.