We are back with another episode of the staging area brought to you by dcsports87.

This will be an interesting episode. Tory and I had a chance to catch up a little bit beforehand, and I didn't think we were going to be back back here, but sometimes the hobby news cycle directs what we talk about here.

And we're gonna be digging into bit bidding ethics and marketplace trust, and I'm glad I have a partner like Tory and DC Sports eighty seven to, like, unpack this with.

I have not gone out on stacking slabs content and, like, really talked about it too much, and I was reserving it for this conversation.

So I don't know I don't know if I'm excited to talk about it, Tory, but I think this will be a good chat.

How are you doing? Good. Doing great. Yeah. Agreed with, I think, the the overall sentiment there. It's a it's a heavy topic. It sucks that we have to talk about it as much as we do.

And it's funny. Yeah. Like you said, just, what, three, four weeks ago, something like that, we we talked about shield bidding and managing zero feedback buyers and some of this stuff on eBay.

And, now here we are following doctor doctor Beckett's comments and the flurry of feedback and opinions out there in the, in the content and social world.

So, yeah. Obviously, in our in our position as someone who sells literally more than anybody, you know, happy to share our perspective on it.

And, yeah, we're gonna have a great back and forth here about how people should be ethically and responsibly managing their activity in the marketplaces we've got. This is going to be the primary topic, and we are going to get to that.

We're going to start elsewhere before we go there. But before we completely get off this, you said something that triggered for me. The commentary around this topic in our community is it hasn't been like a twenty four hour thing.

It's been constant, continual. There's been a lot of different thoughts, opinions. There's been dialogue. I think for me, it's whether I agree with what everyone's saying or not.

I think it's a pretty good thing that this hasn't been just, like, a we're done after twenty four hours. There's a lot of good awareness and conversation around, and hopefully, we can contribute here.

Maybe, like, just starting there before we move off of this, like, have you what what is your perception been on just, like, the overall commentary from the community on this topic? Yeah. I mean, I I think it's good.

It I'm glad we're talking about it. It's it's funny to me because it's kind of the way that content and just news and the buzzworthiness of things in our in our culture is today because we all have talked about showbidding before.

We all know what it is. People will make their jokes about it happening on eBay and different sellers and things like that, but it seemed to always be almost taboo. Like, nobody really talked about it.

It was just a we know it's out there and it's a thing. Then you hear a couple comments where somebody tries to put what is an absurd label on it of defensive shield bidding and say that that's okay, and it just caught fire everywhere.

And so, I'm very glad and encouraged to see that most people have come out and said, there is no such thing as that, and that's what we came out and said. And, all shield bidding is wrong.

A a seller should have no right to bid on their own stuff. Obviously, I know we're gonna dive into the what is ethical and, you know, what kind of maintains the integrity in the marketplace, and then we can get into all that.

But I would say on the whole, very encouraged by what I've seen people say.

But at the same time, knowing some of the stuff I know, it's it's sad where some of the activity is still coming from and, you know, there's still things to be addressed for sure.

I think it's safe to say upfront, DC Sports eighty seven and Stacking Slabs do not support defensive field bidding. Agreed. Agreed. Okay.

We're gonna get into it, but let's get a quick update. What's what's going on in your world that you've been you were traveling last time we spoke. What's what's what are you focusing on? What's new at DC Sports eighty seven? Yeah.

Yeah. So just, just trying to keep up. Obviously, you know, Prope seen left eBay, so that's, that changes our world a good bit. So a lot of people are looking for somewhere new to consign, so our submissions have just been skyrocketing.

You know, last couple days, we've listed about eighteen, nineteen thousand auctions a day, and that is less than the mail that has come in the door.

So, yeah, it's it's crazy. It's it's funny too because often as release weeks and new products come out and really spike, that's kind of what drives some of the consignment influx for us.

And, really, the last couple weeks, obviously, there was tops basketball that came out. But other than that, you know, Topps update.

Baseball just came out a couple, you know, yesterday. There hasn't been a ton release wise kinda riding that, you know, Topps returning thing. So, yeah, just trying to keep up is is the summary, and and I see what you're sharing now.

That's that's a good picture there. So what happened was I actually had a call with someone, and the mail hadn't shown up yet. And that is literally the view from when I opened my office door.

I just took a picture standing in the doorway, and there's for those who are not looking at this on the feed, there's about eight carts. I think we ended up with about 500 packages that came in, and it was just everywhere.

So, yeah, madness. Okay. So just take us through this. And this is just, like, a normal day at the office. Like, when the, like, the male guy has to just or a or gal has to just absolutely love DC Sports eighty seven.

But, like, what happens after this? Like, after all of these packages are just sitting here, like, what is the how do you get these to where they need to be and, like, this what is the start of the process, I guess?

So for one, there's a lot of different ways things show up here. We have a big van that we take to do our post office drop offs every day, UPS drop offs, all that.

And our guy who basically coordinates all the logistics of that, he's doing a big pickup at the post office every day. So you're probably seeing, you know, four or five full, like, carts coming in from the post office.

On top of that, you got the UPS guy showing up here. There's the morning and afternoon deliveries. They've each got a full cart or two. FedEx bringing stuff in, DHL with our international guys.

Like, it is just constant stuff coming in the door. We actually just shot a behind the scenes with, Troy Reich, t Reich cards on on Instagram. He's on TikTok and YouTube everywhere.

Great guy. He's been a customer of ours for a long time to kinda share some of the behind the scenes. But it's basically, we get them in. We scan tracking numbers and labels to confirm receipt of everything.

We process them. You know, they go into the system. Notifications go out to customers. We sort them. They've got little QR code labels. We apply to everything, and it kinda follows it through our inventory.

And it goes by service level, by date, and then into our inventory, and then on the imaging and listing, and all the things you can imagine go into it. And, you know, obviously, a couple sentences don't do it justice.

But, yeah, when you're trying to list almost 20,000 things a day, there's a there's a lot of hands and a lot of steps and a lot of pieces of the process to stay organized.

That's insane. I love that behind the scenes, perspective with you know, it's been a trend of these conversations talking about probe steam and new you mentioned new customers coming over to DC Sports eighty seven.

Obviously, that means growth. Yeah. Are you thinking and it's not just like the probe scene of it all.

It's I feel like everything from, you know, the DC Sports 80 seven brand is definitely I feel like this has been a really big year for your brand, and we've talked about the national.

Has has what has transpired this year changed anything from your mind in terms of, like, what you're thinking about heading into 2026? Not not really. No.

You know, the reason we've grown so much is just all along, it's been hire people before you need them, build the tech before you need it, find ways to get more efficient so that you can scale it, you know, level after level after level.

So, it's kinda been our mindset all along, and I don't say that to be cocky or brag, but it's just that's what's let us grow and not fall apart as we've gone from, you know, what used to be 800 listings a day to now 18,000 listings a day.

And it's kinda helped us keep up with that.

So it's a lot of the same stuff. It's just what, you know, new tech is out there, what new partners could we work with, how can we be better at working with shops and with breakers and and things like that.

So it's a lot of the same focuses. It's just obviously on a whole other level because our volume has reached a new level, to keep up with things. It's fun to see hobby businesses grow.

We're gonna get into the defensive show bidding and show bidding of it all. But I always like to just take a look at what's sold at DC Sports eighty seven each week and pick out a few cards to talk about.

This one caught my attention, and this is the '90 eight Skybox e x 2,001 Paul Canerco essential credential future PSA eight.

10 copies of this card, and I know from the circles that I follow and run-in that these types of cards, no matter the player in a parallel in a set like this, are highly desirable and highly collectible.

What what what is your reaction, I guess, to this Conerco sale and, you know, obviously, the the impact that credentials has had and specifically 98 credentials have had on just collectors.

For sure. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those, like you said, there's a you know, you and I are are old enough that we remember when these cards first came out.

I'm sure many listening were not quite in the hobby yet, but, you know, mid to late nineties was kinda my prime entrance into it.

And, yeah, you know, we kinda came out of, like, the late eighties, early nineties, which was, like, the junk wax era.

And then when finest came around in '93, and we got SP, and then you started seeing sets like Skybox and, you know, the Fleer Brilliance and, Metal Universe and all these sets came out.

And I think it was kind of when the what we would call today, like, case hits, kinda back then. But back then, it was just these really rare parallels.

And so, over time, they've just dried up so much. Right? Because at the time, they weren't really appreciated quite yet, and so some are probably lost in trash or, you know, kids' attics that got cleaned out and things like that.

Finding them in good condition is really tough, and there's just not that many copies.

And so, you know, when you're chasing Starrubies and Refractors and Credentials and 24 carats out of Flare Brilliance and things like that, there's just not many out there.

So if you wanna own one, you really have to jump on it when it comes available on the market. And so I'm not shocked by the sale, thrilled for the owner.

I think this is a good price for it. But, yeah, it's it's one of those weird ones where sometimes even if the name isn't a big name, the cards do great just because you get very limited chances to own one.

I definitely had a a a disconnect with, Conerco in a Dodgers uniform and just thinking of him as a White Sox player. But Yep. That that that happens a lot in cards. Similar era.

And this guy, man, I feel like every time for whatever reason, he played the Colts, he beat us. And I never really liked him. But, this is a 2,000 Fleer showcase, Chad Pennington, rookie masterpiece, one of one selling for $1,191.

And the reason why I wanted to bring up this card, obviously, a one of one in this era is not the same as one of ones in the current era.

But I think about a player like Pennington, and he was, you know, probably middle of the road when he played on some games.

But you see, you know, twenty five years later, his one of one out of the set is still commanding, you know, almost $1,200.

So I think, you know, regardless of your impression of Pennington, the what matters in a lot of these instances is is brand and parallels and the desire around that. So I don't know.

I'm not asking you to maybe bring up any good memories of Chad Pennington, but I I am curious, like, how you think about players in, like, the rarity and scarcity with, like, sets like this that have a lineage and legacy.

Right. Yeah. And and to your point, one on ones are different in the late nineties than they are today and and back when, you know, early two thousands.

You know, Chad Pennington, whenever I see him, honestly, my first thought is Randy Moss. So I just think of them both at Marshall in the late nineties, and so that's kind of what I think of.

But, yeah, I think it's just one of those things where there are only so many masterpieces out there, you know, all the showcase sets from that have the one on one.

Nowadays, I feel like we have a lot of one on ones because we have plates and black prisms and super fractures.

And then sometimes it's like you get different versions of one on ones. And so it just it may be watered down a little bit, not not all the way. But, yeah, I think it's just he's notable enough.

And if you're anybody knows who you are and you're from a popular set and a popular era of cards where, you know, we were just looking at a credentials card that's got a low print run, but it's not a one of one.

And look what it did. You know, it it never shocks me. It's one of those things where sometimes people will say, hey. I've got this one on one card like this.

What do you think it'll go for? And it's like, you don't know what to tell them because quite often the answer is, you know what? It could go for 500 or 5,000, and I wouldn't be shocked because it's all about who needs it.

If there's two Pennington PC guys out there or somebody who's trying to get all the one on one masterpieces they can, there's really no ceiling.

If not, you might be down to just, hey. Who cares about Chad Pennington? And it does a couple $100. And so it it's interesting to watch these auctions.

I hate when people ask me that because it puts you on the spot, and it's like, there really isn't a great way to project it, because we just have so many fewer comps that it's not like you can go to a 2024 or 2025 card where you've got comps all day long and just really nail the current market value on something.

It's a lot more of a wild card when we get into this stuff, but it it's fun to see what they do for sure.

I do love this card, and you can see Pennington's shadow, and he's got his two hands in the air with the fingers pointed after a touchdown.

Honestly, it was probably after the Jets beat the Colts in the playoffs 41 to nothing. That is a game that I can't get out of my mind with.

And the other thing about Pennington, you bring up the Marshall and I hadn't thought about this in a while, but how about the fact that he wore the same colors in college right through to the pros, which, I Very true.

Find interesting. Alright. Last one is not the same as the others. That's for sure. We've got the 2021 Christian McCaffrey gold kaboom one of one selling for $3,300.

I do a lot I think the the gold's obviously there's more rarity than the standards and command a higher price. But Yeah. It amazes me, and I want your feedback on this, Tory. I do a lot of data digging regularly, weekly.

And when I'm scrolling, the amount of, like, downtowns and kabooms I see in those listings and I'm I'm talking about, like, listings that are, like, a thousand dollars or more. Like, there's a ton. So I don't know.

Like, what's your reaction when you when you see a sale like this? Yeah. I think we've talked about it, maybe touched on it at least before, but the whole downtown color blast kaboom, all these, there's just so much demand for them.

Great sale, but it's just it's just crazy to me. And and like you said, I'll often do the same. I'll look at what we have up on eBay at any given time, and we might have 40 or 50,000 listings live.

And if I just sort auction highest priced, those, you know, SPE case hits I just rattle off will be 10 of the top 20 or something. They're up there.

You know, I saw someone say something recently about, the purple kabooms that Panini came out with and how are those gonna do and are we, you know, introducing too many parallels and watering down the market for these these chase cards.

We had a Warren Moon we just sold for like $4,400 for one of those purple kabooms and it's just so, you know, no sale with kabooms in downtown surprises me anymore.

Every now and then, I'll you know, we might get, like, two of the same player into the same week, and it's alright.

Is the market gonna hold up? And no. They just you know, one beats the other, and they just keep going and going and going. So I've I've stopped trying to guess what some of these are gonna do.

You know, I know the comps are out there and you can kinda look, but when it comes to the golds, much less the greens, and now that we've introduced purple and all this, it's, it it's just crazy.

I mean, I'm I'm really curious to see too as Panini is phased out of the license card market.

What that kind of does for these cards we've all really relied on is, like, foundations of the chase cards in each sport, the kabooms and color blast and downtown and things like that.

And, it'll be interesting to see how that value does it keep appreciating, and there's even more demand without more supply being introduced?

And do we see those climb or what happens? So, very interesting to watch what these will do going forward. Man, that warm moon sales insane.

He's definitely one of those players where I always, like, view, like, the case hits maybe skewed to a more younger audience. And I just imagine someone pulling that from a pack and being, like, Warren who?

And, like, going to YouTube when Warren Moon is, like, super nostalgic for people in our in our Us old guys out here. Yep. Yep. Alright. Let's get into the meat of the conversation, talking about bidding ethics and marketplace trust.

Obviously, there has been an ongoing conversation and dialogue, around showbidding instances that have happened and then commentary from others. There was a post that you put out at DC Sports eighty seven that was on Instagram.

And it was like I was sharing with you before. I thought it was like it wasn't like right away. Like, a lot of people wanna respond when stuff comes up and, like, put something out right away.

It was like a day or maybe a couple days later, and I felt like it was a the type of message that was needed from a brand that people know and trust in the hobby.

And the the cat like, the the first slide of the post was, like, there's no such thing as defensive bill bidding, which commentary on that.

I like, when you're putting something out there, like, you have to have a hook. And the fact that, like, that hook it's like taking a stand. Like, you're just like, there's no and that's, like, what's been in my mind.

And then you all said it. And then you said followed up by saying, if you own the item, do not bid, which is seems so fundamental, but we're learning is is not.

So let's start with the message that you put out. Like, help us understand, like, your mentality, the timing of it, and yeah. Let's just start there. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things again.

I think when you have you know, everybody was kinda responding to doctor Beckett's comments, and his comments were about for anybody who doesn't know that, you know, he had was referring to items sold with PWCC in the past and how the bidding they were doing was what he called defensive show bidding, made up term, not a real thing, to protect his own items from selling below a certain price point.

And so the post from me and from us was really just our position on that. Obviously, at the volume we sell, we sell more cards than anybody else on eBay.

We have zero tolerance for it. We've banned a ton of people for it. It does not make sense. If you're selling a card, you're not buying the same card. That that just doesn't work.

And to your point, while that feels like this obvious logical statement, a lot of people try to kinda weasel in some logic that says, well, I just wanna be sure it doesn't sell for below this, or, well, I just wanna be able to follow the auction.

So I I put a bid on it so I get notifications. And, like, you can make up any BS reason you want. None of those are justified. Like like, they just aren't.

And so, the reason for the post and what, you know, prompted that post and, you know, subsequently our conversation here was just a very black and white, just couple quick slides about defensive shield bidding is not a thing.

We don't tolerate any kind of bidding on your own item. And just please to everybody out there in the marketplace, we wanna be able to rely on comps. We wanna respect the marketplace.

We wanna preserve that, like, integrity of what's happening in the different environments out there, and this just completely violates that as far as violating trust from sellers to their buyers, violating trust of our comps real, violating, am I paying what I should be paying, or does somebody bid me up?

And so, it just had to be head on, which is why we we came out with that just as kind of a put that out there, and then obviously that led to many shares and comments and all the things leading us to being here today talking about it.

The thing about auctions and, like, just thinking about set sending your cards to auctions, and obviously, DC Sports eighty seven runs likely more auctions than anybody else on eBay.

And to make the decision to give up control. Right? Like Yep. You you you send your cards to auction, and then once they're in auction, you see what happens and what's the response of the of the market.

I how like, to me, in the words that were said by people and how people justified certain things made me feel a little uncomfortable that there are a lot of people out there that are trying to justify actions after they send cards at auction when Yep.

My position is once you send a card at auction, like, the the the the only action you should be doing is maybe hitting hitting the hard buttons. You can see you can watch it.

Yeah. Yeah. Is is this, like, an indication that, like, people just don't understand or they do understand and they they they can't give up that control that they should be giving up with auctions? Like, how do you think about that?

Yeah. So selling format is is key here, and it's it's very an important element of this conversation. Because if your logic is, I'm gonna put this card up for auction, but based on what it's worth, I don't wanna accept less than $200.

I have a very simple solution for you. You take it up, you put it on eBay, $200 buy it now. You want a little more than that, $250 buy it now.

You're not sure what you can get for it, put it up at $500 your best offer and accept offers. You can do auto accept and auto declines on eBay. Auto decline anything below 200. I mean, there are ways to do this.

So to say you're gonna put it up for auction, but put this safety bid or defensive shill, and I keep air quoting because I don't believe in these things, is just absurd because there are ways you can sell it that are perfectly ethical and on the up and up where you don't have to do that stuff.

If you have to bid on your own item to push the price up to an acceptable point, then you why did you auction in the first place?

And I think to in response to what you just said, that's our thinking is if you wanna do that, there are fixed price auctions.

There are fixed price or best offer where you can negotiate with people. And then we'll hear this argument that says, well, I don't wanna sell it for less than $200, so I'm gonna put it up on auction.

I'm gonna bid 200, or I'm gonna bid a couple times up to 200. And if it goes for over that, great. And if it goes for under that, I'll just pay for it.

Well, that doesn't work either. Let let's say I know you're a Colts guy. Let's say a Colts black prism one zero one hits eBay, and I'm the one selling it. And so I bid $500 on it because I don't wanna let it go for less than 500.

Well, if you come over the top of me with a thousand dollar bid, the way eBay works, you're gonna pay 500 plus the bid increments. You're gonna pay, you know, $5. 00 5 or $5. 20 or whatever the increments are.

If I wouldn't have been there and the bid below me was 300, you should have paid $3. 00 5. And so my being defensive didn't didn't do anything okay because all it did was cost you as the buyer $200, and and that's why this doesn't work.

That's why the logic falls apart. If your thought was, I want at least $500, then you put it up at a thousand dollars or best offer, and you negotiate yourself or you try to sell it privately where you can have those conversations.

Anytime you're inserting yourself as both the buyer and seller of an item, all integrity of that sale fall apart.

And so that's really why to to I'm glad you brought up, you know, you send something to auction. If you do that, you are saying, I am letting the market dictate price.

I am forfeiting the right to myself dictate price. Fixed price listings are where you yourself get to dictate price, and people have to understand that difference. I want you to okay.

So from what you have heard, just in terms of the positioning of defensive, defensive show bidding, like, maybe, like, what is you you gave an example there, but maybe, like, from from you as the consumer of hearing that term and the justification, like, how do you interpret, like, what what those actions are?

Like, how that plays out in a individual or within a group. Like, I wanna make sure people who maybe aren't necessarily tuned into everything that we are have some understanding based on what you you have heard.

Yeah. And and what we hear is basically someone who is worried about what their card's gonna sell for.

And so they would say that defensive shield bidding is generating bids on an item or pushing an item up to a certain price point closer to what they think it should go for to assure themselves a certain level of sale.

We see it done a lot of different ways. You know, we will see that person who says, I don't wanna let it go for less than $200.

So I bid 200 and I walk away, and if I win it, I win it. Not okay, but that's one thing people do. The other is the person who is sitting there and it's only at $50.

Right? And you'll see if you look at the bid history, they bid 52, 55, 60, 70, 72, 78. And what they're doing is incrementally trying to find their way to what the true high bidder has bid on something because they don't wanna win it.

They just wanna be sure they push it closer to the price they're hoping to realize. Again, they're just costing someone else money. And the problem with this logic too is auctions don't matter till they're over.

I can't tell you how many times we've had people come to us and say, hey. I sent you a card I was sure is worth $8,000. It's only got eleven hours left, and it's at 1,200. We tell people, calm down.

This is this is the world of auctions. Right? Like, things happen up until the last second. Sniping is a thing, and so you're gonna get most of the activity happens in the last sixty seconds of an auction often.

And so to say I have to put this pin in bid in now to protect it is kind of a fallacy of logic because you're getting in there prematurely, and and you should never be bidding. But what matters is what it closes for.

And so when you're inserting all these little incremental bids to drive someone up, you are probably gonna get close to market value anyway. You're gonna get full market value because market value is what something sells for.

And so the the mindset of these people who would call themselves defensive shield bidders is, I'm not doing anything wrong because I'm just pushing it up to what it's itself for anyway.

And to my earlier point, that's not up to you. It's up to the market to decide what it sells for. And so when you insert yourself and try to manipulate it, that's all you're doing is manipulating the market.

And once you do that, then that sale's no good anymore. We're gonna revisit some of which we've talked about a long time ago, but just some of the, things that your team notices when you start to see funny business.

I want to dig into that a little bit, but I want to ask you because I think this is been on one of the threads that I've seen and it's this conversation. I would love to know, like, how you think about this.

Like, let's say you have a card that is not up for auction, but you have a copy of that card, and you notice that that card let's say there's 10 copies that that cards running at auction, and you place bids on that card because you bought it for a certain price, and God forbid that card goes lower than that price.

Is is is that to you, is that defensive show bidding? And is it is it defensive show bidding if you say, okay.

Well, if it ends at this price, I'm going to I'll I'll take it. I'll I'd rather have two copies than, you know, whatever. So Right. Right. How do you think about that scenario? Yeah.

I mean, in in that case, you can't even call it defensive because I I guess you could, and you could say you're defending the comp. But again, comps only matter when they're real. Like, a comp that's manipulated isn't a valid comp.

And what you're describing, the the big examples on eBay, the two worst ones are Trae Young and Jaren Zack Jackson junior. I think everybody knows if you've ever tried to auction something through us or anyone else.

There are a ton of people in The Philippines who have tried for years now to drive up the market comps to be able to sell things for more, and so they'll go on every Trae Young auction and bid it up up up up up up up.

They never end up paying. It ends up relisting. They do it again. And half the time, we have to go to our customers and just offer to list it as a buy it now where we can require immediate payment to be sure it doesn't happen.

And so it's it's it's just showbidding. It's just manipulation of the market. There's no place for that either. Whether you own the card or not, if you wanna buy more of them, buy more of them. That's entirely up to you.

But if your sole purpose in doing it is to try to artificially inflate the comp of a product or a player or a card, then again, we're we're right back to violating the integrity of the marketplace and of the comp of the item and, you know, that that's where we're left again.

So, again, no place for that either.

I guess you could call it defensive show bidding, but it's really just show bidding. And, again, that's that's fraud. There there's no business doing it. How how many auctions do you say that, DC Sports 87 runs per week?

Right now, we're between 70 and 75,000 a week. Okay. That's a lot. You have tried your best to set up mechanisms so that when you when there's nefarious activity or could be nefarious activity, like, you're you and team get sick.

But when you have that volume, it's next to impossible, I would imagine, to be perfect. Like, maybe talk about just, like, as an operation, I feel like people look at your brand and they trust your brand.

That's why they send you cards. Like, how do you think about the management of the showbidding and the defensive showbidding, whatever you wanna call it, in terms of what you're doing on a weekly basis.

Yeah. For sure. So a a couple things here, and this one gets it's heavy for us because anytime we talk about show bidding, there's somebody in the comments who says, well, you guys had an auction up and it happened to me.

If it did happen to you, I'm sorry. We hate that happening. We know there's no place for it in the hobby. But at the end of the day, we're running 300,000 auctions a month.

And in a typical month, we have 40 to 42,000 unique buyers buy cars from us. So it is simply not possible. We would literally be looking at millions of bids, and and there's no way to do that.

So what we do are things like on our highest priced items, so things that are going for, you know, north of a thousand dollars when they aren't paid right away, looking at some of the bid history.

Does it look like something that was messed with by someone? If so, looking at early cancels and relisting that for the owner.

If we find any evidence that the owner might have been involved in bidding on that, addressing that, we will take it down, cancel the order, ship it back to them, we won't consign for that person anymore.

If we see a trend of items that are awaiting payment for a certain owner and we see that suspicious bid history, looking into it, trying to understand was somebody gaming these, whether it's who owns the cards or a friend of theirs or whatever.

Again, like you just said, we cannot catch it all. It it's simply not possible.

If someone was selling a 100 cards a week, it would be hard to look at every bid. And keep in mind, you can't just say what was the bid placed by the owner, and were they shill bidding or defensive shill bidding their own item?

You have to look at it to your other example. Was it someone else trying to drive up the comp? That's a kind of shill bidding.

Was it the owner doing it? Was it someone who just bid too much and was being irresponsible and then didn't pay? And that's what happened. To to try to evaluate subjectively the intentions of every bid is not something we can do.

So we focus on the higher end things, and we focus on customers of ours who have patterns of items with suspicious bid histories, and we track all that enough to see when trends stand out and see the outliers.

But we're not gonna catch everything, and that's where we really have to rely on eBay to some extent. That's why our conversations with them are always about further buyer vetting, more in you know, integrity of accounts.

How are we validating identification? How are we ensuring that there's a one to one of an individual in an account and not somebody out there with three, four burner accounts?

What are we doing to assess the validity of every bid? How is autopay executed on eBay? And so I will give eBay credit for trying to work on this stuff as we've seen autopay rollout and other things happen.

So we're headed in the right direction. We need to see more of it. We especially need to see it with verifying identity of each account that's registered on eBay.

That's probably the biggest step that still needs to be taken. But, yeah, it's it's a long answer to your question, but it's just it's a lot to unpack when you're at our volume and you get the comment from somebody that says, well, hey.

I should have paid $87, but look at these three bids. I ended up paying 96. And, of course, we don't want that to happen. People are out of their minds if they think we as the seller are gonna go bid on them ourselves.

That does us no good. All we do would be doing is jeopardizing our reputation, risking our entire business to make hardly any incremental profit that doesn't even make sense for us, nor do we have any desire to do that.

We we have a business built on selling things for what the market says they're worth, and we have no interest or motivation to jump in and try to mess with it. So, I know a lot of people wanna say all the big sellers in eBay do it.

They don't. There really is no incentive there, and so, we do what we can. And every day, we try to work with eBay to find more things we can do, but it's a it's a very messy, messy problem to solve fully.

I think that's really I love it, and I think it's really important for the audience to know that there are conversations with the big sellers on eBay, like DC Sports eighty seven and eBay that happened, and their dialogues.

And people like Tory, who are running businesses, are trying to work on behalf of all of us who are trying to bid on cards or send cards through consignment.

And I don't I'm not sure that gets talked about enough. But you put out another post too, which I thought was good.

And we had talked about it on the podcast, but what I liked about this post, it wasn't like go consign your cards with DC Sports 87, but it was like, if you're selling cards on eBay, which Yeah.

Majority of the hobby is, it's like, here are the things that you can do to not, like, 100% prevent yourself, but, like, safeguard yourself.

So I guess, like, what was the spirit of that post? And then also, like, for anyone listening who might not have heard, like, what you've you've done to do that or what you shared, maybe offer some of those tips.

Yeah. Sure. I mean, obviously, selfishly, we want people to sell their cards with us.

And, yeah, that's how we grow our business. We think we're good at it. We think it makes more sense for you to let us pay you about what you clear selling yourself anyway without you having to do shipping and messages and all that.

But at the end of the day, we spend so much time on eBay, and we've been doing this for years and years. We've gotten really good at it.

We're not gonna be that guy who, like, when a new Bowman baseball product comes out, won't tell anybody what prospect he likes because he thinks then they'll buy all his cards and he won't be able to get any.

If I know something I think will help sellers, I'm gonna share it. I I would share it with other sellers that I know who are huge sellers on eBay just like I would share it with somebody selling eBay for the first time.

And so what I put out there was just over time eBay has changed their things they allow you to do, what levers you can pull in settings you can have as far as who buys from you.

We'll often get people saying, why don't you just block all zero feedback buyers? Well, we don't block them because you can't anymore.

That used to be a thing. You used to be able to say, you have to have a feedback score of blank or higher to buy from me. EBay took that away, and so the two real levers you have now are, one, how many unpaid items you'll tolerate.

And so the strictest setting you can have is if somebody has not paid for two or more items they've won in the last twelve months, you can block them from bidding on your items.

We have that set. I wish that was if they have one ever, we can just block them. Because worst case, they can message us and explain it, and maybe there's a case where we can, you know, have a conversation with them.

But, generally, we don't want those people bidding on our things because our we are in the business of getting our customers paid, not of getting our customers bids.

Big difference there. The second is how you limit who can buy from you.

And the other thing eBay will let you do is you can say, based on someone's feedback score, if they're already winning or have won more than blank items from me in a certain period of time, I don't want them buying more.

So, basically, what it's doing is saying they have to buy an item, go through checkout, get it delivered to them, complete feedback, the whole process before they can turn around and bid on something else.

And so what we do is say, if somebody has zero feedback, they can't bid on more than one thing from us. If they bid on it, they have to complete that purchase before they can bid on something else.

So those are just two settings I put out there just because I think there are probably a lot of people who, if you're a casual eBay seller, you don't even know those exist, and you don't know click my eBay account, selling preferences, who can buy from you, manage, and then set those settings.

And so it was just kind of that public service announcement of, hey.

If you sell on eBay, here's what we do, and and we found it to work at least in limiting our exposure, right, to the conversation we've had. We can't make it perfect, and just giving that advice to other people.

And, that's something as we get more of the content we wanna lean into is we've learned a lot, and we've gotten really good at it, and we are not gonna be shy about sharing that because, you know, I that's not something that makes us feel insecure or jeopardizes our business.

It's not gonna be that's part of the secret sauce. We can't tell you. It's this is common sense, and it'll make selling an eBay easier for you. So please do it. Like, I I encourage everyone to follow our lead there.

And an easy way to do that is follow DC Sports eighty seven on Instagram, for the helpful content. I wanna just as we kinda hopefully, for a long time, don't have to talk about this.

But, like, round the corner, which is some general topics. I know for me, this is a this in this incident in the hobby and some of the commentary around it has really caused me to, think about this at at scale.

Like, at what scale is this happening within, like, not just eBay, but just auction houses?

And maybe just as you think about that, like, what are the ripple effects that show bidding can have on just us as collectors and the confidence we have in this industry and space?

Yeah. It's it's huge. I mean, just to name a few of them. Right? We saw doctor Beckett who made his comments about shield bidding, defensive or not, happening with PWCC.

Anyone who follows Boston Card Hunter, you know, he shared a text with a with a major auction house of them knowing that friends or owners of cards were bidding on their own things and not shutting it down.

I know from experience, we have had people sell through us who are relatively new to the hobby, who have worked with businesses giving people advice on how to make profits in the hobby, who have coached people to bid on their own things.

So believe me, this this is out there.

And the the ripple effect is exactly what you said. It's confidence and trust. It's people who might shy away from bidding on something or kind of have that hesitation because they're gonna look at it and say, is the sale genuine?

Is the current price right? Is someone trying to mess with me? Is someone trying to run up my bid? And so, I think there's ways you can look at that.

You know? At the end of the day, know what you're willing to pay for something, and don't bid more than that. I am not saying a show bidder can't still cause you to bid closer to that number than you should.

And if that happens, I absolutely hope it's addressed. If someone sees it in one of our auctions, contact us. If we get a vague comment on Instagram that says, six months ago, I bought something from you guys, and I know it got shilled.

I can't help you. If you can tell me the item, the date when it happened, I promise everyone we will look into that item. And if we can find something, we'll share it with eBay.

We'll look into who owned it. We'll look into the bid history, but, you just have to know what you're willing to pay and just be smart out there. You know, be careful with what you pay and be smart about the way that you bid.

And, at the end of the day, just I I hope that as this gets kind of normalized that we're talking about this and people know what it is, more people take steps to stop it.

And in doing so, we can kinda restore some of that trust and comfort with people bidding.

Because I do think this is far more an issue on the high end than it is your mid to low end items, which means this is probably touching a a smaller slice of the consumer base out there.

But it's definitely a a a portion that really matters quite a bit. That's a great clarification point that wasn't brought up until the end of our conversation Yeah.

Conversation. But I guess, like, how would you this is anytime that one of these bombshells goes off, people talk, and there's a lot of dialogue. Like, would you say what has happened since this news? And who knows, Tory?

By the time this comes out, there might be more new. There probably will be. But, like, how would you rate, like, the response to this? Like, would you say what you've seen has been pretty good, not so good, really good?

Like, how would you how would you analyze it? Yeah. It it's so hard to answer that because everybody's gonna give everybody the lip service. Right? Everybody's gonna say it's bad. It's taboo. Don't do it. It's wrong. It's unethical.

It's really people need to step up and do it. If you're running an auction house or if you're an eBay seller like we are, if you catch anybody doing it, a a consignment customer of yours bids once on their own card, ban them.

Don't sell for them anymore. If if you're running an auction house and you run into that, get rid of them.

If you're, you know, eBay or you're a big business player in this space, like and we work with them closely, what actions can you take to help us all solve this problem?

It's just, you know, it's one of those things where you can say a lot about it, but then to tell people do things about it, it doesn't make a huge impact. And so it's just all about on whatever level you can take action against it.

I think the sentiment and the response content wise has been great. It's just gonna we're actually the substance behind it to know that it really makes a difference.

Yeah. I think what's what's giving me some sort of satisfaction inside is it seems like inevitably because there's been this has happened, you know, annually or semiannually that eventually, like, this comes out.

And eventually, people get caught and get in trouble. And to me, that signals that, like, transparency and trust are rewarded. And like, if you're doing bad or nefarious things, eventually, you're going to get caught.

And once you get caught, like, it's next to impossible to earn back trust in this space. But I don't know. That's kind of what I'm hanging my hat on. I'm I'm I'm not naive to think that there aren't people continuing to do this or Sure.

Justify defensive show bidding, but I don't know. Maybe one of those cream always rises to the top sort of instances. At least I'm thinking about this in this unregulated market that I love in my U E, thinking about utopia.

That's kinda how I'm thinking about it in my mind. Yeah. For sure. No. And and I think, you know, as the hobby evolves, everything evolves. And, unfortunately, bad things evolve along with the good.

And so, you know, the same way we hear about shield bidding on eBay auctions, you'll hear somebody talking about, you know, shield bidding on random team wheel spins on, you know, a live stream break.

Right? Because it's just somebody in there playing with it.

And so, yeah, it's just the burden is on the seller, and it's on the business hosting the platform. So it's on the whatnot, fanatics live, eBay's, and it's on the sellers on each of those platforms to do everything they can.

And if both of those parties are aligned in trying to combat this, we're going to get it reduced into your point. As people get caught, they're gonna get pushed out and kinda get the black mark on their name.

But, it it takes a long time, and and you're never gonna catch it all. It's just about trying to do everything each person can do to minimize the problem along the way.

Tory, we covered a lot of ground. Anything that we we didn't talk about regarding this topic that you wanted to hit before we get out of here?

No. I I don't think so. Again, I think we kinda dove into what it is, the why it's wrong, though both of those seem like they should be very common sense. And and yeah. And that's our position on it.

But again, yeah, everybody, you know, follow us on Instagram. We talk about this stuff there, so we wanna get comments and get reaction, get engagement there because that's a healthy way to to surface everything.

So, we're always happy to have that conversation, and, yeah, glad we could could bring it up and dive back into it.

And, hopefully, we don't have to have another conversation in a month or two about this because I feel like two should be adequate.

Yes. We're hoping this is the conclusion of the shield bidding and part two defensive shield bidding series here on the staging area. That's right. Appreciate all you tuning in. We'll be back. Talk to you soon. Thanks.