Alright. We are back with another episode of the staging area with dcsports87.

We were away for a little bit longer than we have been since we started this, but, we're gonna have a couple weeks in a row, with you. And we've got some exciting and fun topics to sink our teeth in.

And today is is one of them. If you saw the episode title, you will know today we're talking about shill bidding as a primary topic, which isn't, necessarily fun to talk about or to think about or when it happens to you.

But I think it's important from a content perspective, especially, being with Tory and DC Sports eighty seven, being largest sell seller on eBay, but from a volume perspective, they're seeing so much.

So Tory brought the topic to me, and I was like, yes. Let's talk about it. But we'll get there. Tory, how are you? I know you're freshly vacationed. You back in the saddle ready to talk cards? Yeah. For sure. No. Yeah.

It was good. We're, we've become Labor Day week beach people, so, it was great to get out to the Outer Banks. We spent a week down there with the whole family. Disconnect, lots of time on the sand, a little bit of sun, not too hot.

But, yeah, it was a great week. Nice little, kinda break between, like, the national and all the craziness we all get and, like, you know, q three and over the summer and, yeah, before we close the year out here.

So happy to be back and, yeah, dig into a, a meaty topic to say the least today for sure. I gotta maybe get some perspective from you.

Are you, like, are you I know you work a lot and you really enjoy what you're doing. Are you able to completely unplug, like, I don't know what's going on and then you show up, you know, the Monday back from vacation?

No. No. No. I can't I can't do that. I I wish I could. My wife wishes I could. I know I am not wired that way.

I have to be plugged in on some level all the time, which is not that the business needs me to be or anything like that. It's just the way I am. I just, you know, it's kinda go go go, and it's hard to take your foot off the gas.

So I can slow down, but I'm incapable of stopping. That resonates with me in a big way. Before we get into the the primary topic, send we we has we have not spoke since football has been back on the field.

We're we'll see how long this lasts, but both our our teams won week one, which is is good. Tory's a Commanders fan for anyone who, is not, aware of that yet.

But I'm curious. Like, football's back takes over, like, I've never seen before. I was watching football Thursday night, Friday night. I had college going on Saturday, then Sunday, Sunday night, Monday.

And then by Tuesday, I was like, man, I kinda wish we still had football, which I'm a sicko. But was curious just, like, as football takes over, how does that maybe impact, what's happening on your side of the house?

Does it change any? Has football always been happening, or I know football is always getting, submitted to DC sports, but curious if you're seeing anything different now that we're in season.

Yeah. I mean, it definitely becomes a bigger part of what we see week to week.

Really, what you see the most is I don't think there's anything and there's no sport like football. What it's unique in is that you've got seventeen weeks of the regular season.

Right? And so there's Sunday, and then there really can't be a lot that happens to a player's market until another Sunday. And so, you know, the things that we see a lot is it's, you know, Sunday, a guy goes off.

And so, like, a great example, you know, Daniel Jones is probably a good example here. It's like Don't don't curse them, Tory. Yep. Y'all kinda forgot about him. You know, this, what, 2019 rookie, was he, for the Giants?

And, you know, here we are six years later, and he has a a big game week one. I don't think a ton was expected of him. And so it's players like that where what we'll see is like the game's Sunday.

Monday morning, people are overnighting their Daniel Jones RPAs and prism color and everything to us. We're getting it Tuesday morning because they wanna get it up right away, pay for our premium service.

So, people can just play the timing in football easier because you know that if he's got a dot of a game on Sunday, that's gonna turn sharply down.

And so it's not like baseball and basketball and hockey where you just got games after games. You know, even basketball, it's, you know, three, four games a week at least, so things are happening.

So, yeah, there's just a lot more reaction where what happens on the Sunday prior really dictates who we're gonna see a lot of that following week, less so on your established superstars, your Mahomes and, you know, even the, Burrows and guys like that.

Like, there's not as much volatility there, but, yeah, it really does.

What what you see happening on Sunday, any player you get excited about, the guy who won your fantasy matchup for you, like, those are the guys that are flooding our mailbox, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.

I will say, man, it takes a lot for any of those, collectors out there who have just been sitting on their Danny Dimes stash and waiting.

And they got their moment. They got their moment, and they said, okay. I've been sitting on it. Let me send it to DC Sports.

I guess, conversely, like, on the other side of that, do you observe, like, if someone does have a bad game, like, do you and they've got cards that are currently at auction, or, like, do you see, like, a flow stop based on performance?

Like, if there is a player who maybe has a bad week one or has consecutive bad week ones, do you see people pulling back?

Or are people more just like, let me wash my hands of this stuff and move on to the next? Like, what's your observation there? So much of that depends on where that player's at in, like, their career journey.

Right? If if Joe Burrow has two or three, I used him a minute ago, like, really bad weeks in a row, it's certainly not gonna help his market. Like, I get that.

But people are gonna have more patience. There's not gonna be a a fire sale or a rush to kinda cash out of that player. Where maybe you see that more is if you have a a rookie sophomore year guy who comes out and starts really slow.

We might see people sell those because there's still kind of that, anticipation and hype from the season just getting underway that people are kinda selling off that buzz, and they're worried that maybe that downward trend continues.

So I think on your, you know, younger guys, rookie players, we do see that. On guys who've been in the league for a while, not not really. You know, they're kinda their market is what it is.

And if we're honest, if we look at the Lamar Jacksons and Josh Allens and Patrick Mahomes of the world, at this point, we're really judging them on what's gonna happen, like, weeks fourteen to seventeen to determine playoff seeding and how they play in the playoffs.

Up until then, it's almost like a a cruise control thing, and I don't think performance means nearly as much as it does for somebody where the sample size is just so small and and you have to react week to week.

I know. It's like we all just wanna overreact week one even though it's just one week.

Has if you were to say something that happened week one with with a player or team that you might not have anticipated, but you after, like, week one has settled, you'd say, okay.

This maybe actually has some substance and may actually materialize into more positive things happening with that player or teams like that market.

What would that do you have, like, after week one, I'm I'm you don't have to say I'm a full believer, but you can say I'm kind of a believer of what I saw over here. Yeah. Yeah.

It's it's hard because it is one week, and it's like in the NFL, especially in this world of, like, fantasy and stats, and like you said, we react to everything so quickly. It's like, you know, I could look at a Geno Smith and go, okay.

He also had a huge game. So maybe, hey. We've all he's always been that guy where I feel like for years now, he's actually been pretty solid or at least outplayed what people expect of him.

And so you kinda keep waiting for people to go, okay. Wow. He did it again. So maybe he's gonna be a great fit there and this is all gonna work out. Same could maybe be said for Daniel Jones.

I mean, we could say it about a number of these quarterbacks who came out strong. Yep. Fingers crossed. There you go. Like, those are the kind of guys, but I think we see so often when that happens.

There are people who have been sitting on those rookies or whatever they have in their collection for four, five, six years on some of these players that it's or longer. I mean, Geno Smith, we're talking about a decade now. Right?

Like, so you see a lot of that stuff get moved really quick because it's it's kinda like, I'm gonna take the safe bet, the sure thing, money while his market's gonna spike up a little bit, and I'm not gonna wait and see if it comes back down to earth.

So, there's a handful of those players.

And then with some of the other guys, like I said, on the established stars, it's less severe. But, like, you know, Josh Allen bringing them back against the Ravens for the win or, you know, some of these other games.

It's like those things also, like, like I said, I think with Allen, it's gonna be about the playoffs. We just kinda don't really care a whole lot. He's a star. He's a lead. You know, his market is what it is.

But, those things definitely help along the way just to give you those little bump ups. Maybe before we move off of this, just curious, like, since you've been back in the saddle, football is happening.

Is there like, when you think about any cards that have come through, has there been anything that stands out to you on the football side as a cool piece that, someone submitted to DC Sports?

You know, I I'm not gonna say one specific card, but with all the stuff that's come out, like, immaculate NT kind of finally rolling around and this is what I to be honest I hate it.

Like the cadence of some of the releases in line with the seasons, it like it makes you feel like you've got a foot in two camps because I'm like wow look at these cool twenty twenty four NT cards coming in.

We had some cool, like, I think we had a Neighbors and Worthy dual shield and a couple really nice, like, one on ones and some of the big name RPAs of of those guys.

And then we're watching twenty twenty five games and looking at a whole different rookie class.

And so, that's really just kind of the top of mind thing for me is you you're kind of like living in last year in the hobby to some extent because that's where all the cards are still, but you're in the moment and in this year when it comes to watching the sport and the actual on field stuff.

And so, it takes a little just remembering where you are and what you're thinking about.

You know, am I looking at my my fandom for my team or my fantasy team, or am I looking at what I own asset wise in the hobby? And it kinda anchors you to different different points and different players.

No doubt. I can't keep any of that straight constantly. I don't know the years. It just is all blurry in my head. And I have to relook at listings, save searches, and tools like Card Ladder to make it make sense to me.

Before we move on to the primary topic, I know you I keeps keep saying this. I feel like week over week, but I continue to see, DC Sports social presence, growing.

And I feel like your team is way more active on social, which is is cool to see. Maybe just share a little bit of perspective, and this can be kinda the what's happening at DC Sports.

I'm just curious, like, since you've kinda opened up and put more of a a mindset on what you're doing from a social perspective, like, what sort of things have have transpired?

Yeah. Yeah. Just try to get a lot more engaged with people. I know we've talked about this before, so I'll try to not overly repeat myself. But, yeah, just ways that we can be more involved with the people who are selling through us.

We're a big company. We sell a lot of cards. You know, we're at, like, a quarter million auctions a month now. It's just it's a stupid number. But it makes it more fun for us, and it makes it more interesting for our customers.

We can stop along the way and look at some of the cool things in the hobby. You know, we don't want it all to just be, you know, their little, the cards are just like another unit of inventory that's moving.

That's what they are, operationally, but when we see a cool card, we wanna share it. And so, you know, like on Instagram, we've been trying to do the kind of cards that you are more interesting.

I think one thing I'll say is there's a big difference when you look at, like, engagement on social media, what people wanna see, and what's valuable dollar wise and what's valuable interesting and engagement wise.

You know, we put things up like notable nicknames autos.

We had a cool one the other day about Peyton Manning where you inscribed the sheriff on it. Or you find a really cool, like, a MJ Kobe LeBron triple relic piece and things like that.

Like, those really get people to stop and look at them. When we look at, like, how many people come and look at our profile or scroll our page from those posts, it's crazy high.

If I just put up, you know, another gold refractor, Bowman Chrome auto of a player we've all seen a 100 times, it might be a $10,000 card, but it's just not that interesting.

And so, for us, we've been trying to do things, find the cards that are interesting, post those and share those with people because they are cool to see on social media.

We've invited all of our customers to save their Instagram hashtags, or their profiles to their profile with us so that if we share one of their cards, we can tag them. We have collaborative posts directly with our customers.

In two weeks, I guess, maybe a week and a half or so after this goes out, on January 29, so that'll be, like, the Monday of week four. Mike Geo from Sports Cards Nonsense is gonna come here out of our office with me.

We're gonna run a high end football eBay live auction event. So, be cool just to do something where we can interact more with people during auctions than just kind of our static usual, you know, auctions running seven days a week.

So, I guess that's a a mix mixed bag there, but that's just some of the stuff we've got going on, as we continue just to try to get more diverse in how we interact with the people that we're working with day to day.

I love it. Exciting stuff.

Let's do it. Let's get into, show bidding. I I referenced putting show bidding in the subject line of this episode, which I am, in fact, doing, and people are going to see it and be like, what are these guys talking about?

I am curious. I feel like it here's the like, is there a topic that you can start talking about online in this community that drives more engagement than this topic of show bidding?

Like, like, I can't think of one. Can you? No. No. And and I'll say, you know, we we post a lot, and we're usually posting cards, cool submissions.

We're at a show, something like that. But anytime I use the I always feel like we should drop one of the l's just to make it a four letter word so I can refer to it that way.

So and and I guess just to level set because I'm shocked how often we get asked this, we should define what we mean by shill bidding because there are people out there who don't know.

So when we talk about shill bidding, we are talking about the manipulation of an auction's price with zero intent to win, only an intent to drive it up. And you generally see that happening in one of two ways.

That's either someone who owns a bunch of a player and they're trying to inflate his market so they can reference these false comps and sell their cards for more, or it's someone who owns the card themself and whether it's being sold on their eBay account or through a consignor like us, they're placing these little incremental bids to try to push that max bid up as high as they can just to net more money.

So just for anybody who maybe hasn't heard the term, it's hard to believe they're out there, but I do know some people haven't.

When we dive into this topic, that is the problem that we're diving into. Great, definition. I think, I love the way that you talk through that.

I I think that there's another, like, entry question that I wanna throw out there, entry level question, and that's, do you does the individual who is doing the shilling, like, can you shill and not necessarily know that you're shilling?

Do you think that is something that that can be done? I'm gonna say no. I think anything we talk about on any level, I could probably dream up some weird, bizarre, edge case, exception to the rule and all that.

But at the end of the day, you know, by the definition I just gave, shilling is intentionally doing something.

So what you're describing would be something like somebody has a card at auction with us, a DC Sports eighty seven as their consignor.

They sent the card into us, and yet for whatever reason, they also are trying to actively buy the same card and they happen to see one and they place a bid on it and then realize, oh, shoot.

That's mine that I sent to DC. If we're honest, that's really not that likely.

If you're putting a bid on a card you own, it either means you're buying and selling something at the same time, which is generally not very sound financial strategy, or you are doing the exact thing we're here to talk about, which is show bidding.

So that that that's my take on it. I that makes sense. One more clarifying question that I wanna toss your way, and I want you to let me know if if this is shill shill adjacent or not shilling at all.

One is a Like that. Yeah. What what what what example I can think a lot about is let's let's just use a a an example of somebody having a gold prism of a rookie.

We'll just say, well, Malik Neighbors. I don't know why I'm thinking Malik Neighbors. They they have the gold prism Malik Neighbors. They own a copy of this card.

Now, maybe they're they're not happy with or Malik Neighbors isn't performing well, but they they they bought this card right when it it came out. And they're probably, you know, a few thousand dollars into it.

Well, on the leak neighbors, another copy becomes available and is selling on eBay. And that individual then goes and puts a let's say, just drops a $2,000 bid on it right out of the gate.

So it's while they maybe not necessarily they don't necessarily want the card, they are they are thinking about it from maybe, like, a price protection perspective.

Or if it does sell for whatever the $2,000 that they're happy to take it just to protect the other one.

I know that's kinda like I'm I'm saying that upfront because I know that this goes on in this space. Like, people try to price protect their cards, but, like, how do you think about price protection in comparison to show bidding?

Are they the same thing, or are they different? It's all about intent. If if the intent was I own one, so I can't stand the idea of seeing this one sell for less than $2,000, so I'm just gonna throw that bid out there.

And I'm putting that bid out there, and what I hope is that somebody comes over top of me and all I did was manage to push that price up a little more, then I'm trying to manipulate the market to protect my own investment that's unethical, it's wrong, you're trying to game the system, it's shilling everything under the sun.

If you are doing it because you have decided, I think this card is a good investment at $2,000 or less, I'm gonna place that bid, and if I win it, I'm gonna buy it.

And that's not your own personal card that you or someone else is selling for you. Fine. You're, you know, you're placing a bid with intent to buy.

That's what we want to happen on eBay. So, I I can't say anything negative about that. So, again, it really just all comes back to the intent of the buyer and why that bid was placed.

Okay. This is great. Why why did you and I I share this with the audience. Like, you came to me and you said, let like, let's have a conversation about this, which I love and appreciate.

And I'm always curious, like, why did you have like, what is going on in your world that you felt compelled that now is a, I know the market's nuts, but, like, why is now a good time to have this chat?

Yeah. I I think just because we haven't.

Like, I I wish I had a better reason, but we just, you know, we until I started working with you and we started this this series on on your, platform here and doing this with stacking slabs, starting the show, we didn't really have a time to stop, pick this topic, and just really, like, bring it all out, and to the surface.

As you kinda alluded to earlier, I've had a handful of posts on social media we've put out there just about things we run into. You know? So, every time we do that, we get a lot of applause, a lot of hate, a lot of everything.

There's just such a perception with show bidding and big sellers, and we can unpack as much of that as you want and and kind of what order we wanna tackle things here. So let's do that at some point in the next few minutes.

But, also, it just needs to be talked about because if the volume we deal with on eBay, we're gonna have some insight into what levers can we pull and can we not pull to control who is bidding on items, who is winning items, how do we address issues with our consignment customers selling through us when we catch them doing this.

And there's just there's so much to kind of unpack in all of that that it's a lot easier to do when we can sit here in a really structured way, just bring it all out.

You can call out the things you hear and say, hey. Let's talk more about that.

And, just having that forum to do it is why it makes a lot of sense for you and I to do this because I think it will be educational in two ways, which is my goal here, which is one, just to educate people on what it is, why we do what we do, what we can and can't control.

And then two, just what our view is as one of the biggest sellers out there of why it's a problem and what we kind of ask from eBay to try to make this less of an issue, over time.

Okay. So we're gonna unpack all of it. I want to start with this. You you said, you know, we'll present topics something related to show bidding on Instagram, and it opens the door for people praising us, people criticizing us.

I guess, what are the instances like, what is an example of an instance that happens that causes you to say, let's bring this up with the community of people?

Like, what's that catalyst to start this conversation? Right. So if we if we just look at chauvinning, like I said, there's a perception that it happens way more with big sellers.

There's some reasons that are kind of the obvious, well, we sell more. So, of course, we're gonna run into every kind of buying behavior more than your average person. Mhmm.

And for a long time, no matter who it is, there's a couple of us out there who are the biggest sellers on eBay with cards, and I think that people have gotten this idea or at least somehow that we like show bidding. It's like, hey.

They want those couple extra bids to make an extra couple percentage points on every item. Let me tell you why that doesn't make any sense. Number one, we have a quarter million auctions a month. I already gave you that number.

For us to sit there and try to drop bids on that many items is not worth the time. Number two, our reputation and credibility and trust in this space is the only reason we get that many cards from people to sell for them.

If we go and jeopardize that by placing a shield bid to earn a couple percentage points on a couple dollars, you're talking cents. It it doesn't make sense. We we don't wanna do that. We want our customers to get paid.

We have no interest in gaming things. And then on top of that, if you shell bid something or put bad poor intent bids on something, you are drastically increasing the likelihood that it will not get paid for.

Either the winning bidder looks at the bid history and says, hey. That's bogus. I'm not paying. Or the zero feedback account is doing the shilling or whoever it is ends up winning it and then they don't pay.

If they don't pay, our customer doesn't get paid, we don't get paid. It's a bad customer experience. We make no money. Like, this is just bad for every party involved.

And so there really is truly no incentive for a seller to do this. And so when we bring this up in places like social media, the most common reason is that we will catch one of our customers doing this on their items.

Particularly on our higher end items, we do review those regularly. Every day, spot checking items, looking at bid history, looking at who's placing the bids.

Are they coming from zero feedback accounts? Are they coming from an account where we can tell off location, off name, off a lot of other attributes that we can pull off the back end?

Is this potentially the owner of this card? And if we detect that pattern happening, what our action is is we immediately end everything we have at auction for that customer in house.

We take all the auctions down. We ship it back to them at their expense, and we message them and say, hey. We have a zero tolerance policy on this. We can't consign to you anymore now or in the future.

We're shipping your cards back, and we're just done. So when that happens, it's really frustrating because we put the work in only for the customer to be upset, a bad thing to happen.

It's not fair to the people who actually wanted to buy those cards. You you know, it's just bad all around.

And so that is what often prompts us posting saying, hey. Reminder. Here's our policy. And that's what we put out there, and then that's what leads to that very, mixed bag of very strong reactions that we get in response.

A couple of things off of that. What how do you define the higher ticket items? Like, what is, like, the the range you're typically doing the further investigation on?

And then also, just with DC Sports, because obviously, you don't know other operations what's going on. Like, how often do you have to go through this miserable experience of stopping these auctions, setting all the cards back?

Like, how often does that happen? Yeah. I mean, it's it's not constant. And, look, let's be totally honest about all of this.

Like, we probably are talking about looking at the cards in the 3 to $500 and up range just because this behavior is way more common on higher end stuff. But I am not saying it doesn't happen on mid to low end.

I'm just saying we have to pick where we are best investing our time to try to protect the integrity of our auctions, the integrity of the eBay bidding platform as a whole, and so higher end is where we target those efforts.

You could absolutely show bid at 20 or $50 card. I get that. And I also understand and will totally own that we can't catch every single person who does something wrong across all those auctions all the time.

I would say one to two times a month, we are catching and banning a customer for doing this.

I wish it wasn't that often because if we say that's, you know, say 20 to 25 times a year, we shouldn't be having to kick that many customers away and return all their cards because they are obviously doing this.

I'm sure it happens more than that, and we continue to put more and more time into it. A couple of us here try to catch what we can.

But at the end of the day, this is one of those problems where a lot more is gonna be reliant on the, you know, the proactive preventative measures than it is on the reactive measures of, hey.

We saw it happen, and now we're gonna respond to it, which is what we can do as a seller. Obviously, what we want is to put more of that on the front end and prevent it from happening in the first place.

The, thing that I always hear online or see when individuals are talking about show bidding and, showing show bids on an auction, like, on Instagram and their stories is everyone points to, like, zero feedback.

Like, if someone's seeing zero feedback bidders, then it automatically they're saying this is being this is a show bid, which I would say that's a great red flag.

Although, it's not like it's not a 100%. You sometimes there are low feedback sellers that pay for their cards. I know that goes on too. Right.

Outside of, like, the the the low feedback, zero to none, or or, you know, just low, Is there are there any other patterns or things you recognize when you're identify identifying show bidding that might help anybody else out there who's bidding on auctions and making sure that they're not having to pay more than they should on a card?

Yeah. I mean, generally, zero feedback is a big red flag.

I'll say and I took a look at this, you know, we've had over 1,200 feedback accounts, unique zero feedback accounts, who have won a card from us and paid. So I don't wanna say that every single zero feedback out there is illegitimate.

I do want to say that zero feedback are inherently exponentially higher risk than established buyers who have a feedback score, who have proven to complete transactions and do things the right way on eBay.

As far as bidding patterns, you're usually looking for one of two things.

One is very, very late bids. So right as an item goes to end, kind of that creeping up to try to push something up. It's at, you know, a $180 and there's a minute left and you start seeing the bids pop in of $1.

85, $1. 90, $1. 95, 200, kinda trying to find their way to that max. The other is just that run of incremental bids that happens in a way that seems like why would you do that?

So say an item is sitting on eBay at $8 and you see a bunch of bid gets bids get placed at nine, 10:12, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen, nineteen.

It's like, if you really wanted that card for $19, you're probably just gonna bid 20. You're either gonna wait at the last minute and try to snipe it, or you're just gonna put that bid in, set it, and forget it.

For someone to do the repeated series of bids, that's what we talk about with shield bidding is we're seeing someone try to just push it up towards a number without the intent to follow through on legitimate purchase.

They actually, you know, go through it themselves as they should be expected to if you are placing bids on eBay.

So if these if chill bids are going on or perceived chill bids are going on, like, how do you how do you you know, you've you've mentioned the instance of, like, detecting it and which is great in getting rid of those individuals.

You've also said, like, we there's so much volume. It's impossible to monitor everything. Is there are there instances where after the fact, individuals will come to you and say, this I believe this item was show bidded.

Either I tried to bid on it or this was my item, and I think it got manipulated. And if so, like, how do you handle those sorts of, conversations after the fact?

Yeah. Sure. So this is one of the things we get pushed back for a lot of social media, and it and it's so tough because I I do sympathize with the buyers who run into this.

Well, they'll say, hey, I really wanted this card. I was winning it at $70 and then at the last minute I see a zero feedback account come in and bid $78.

82, 91 and then I won it for whatever, 95, a $100 something like that. But I feel like this, you know, illegitimate account pushed me to pay more.

We've had a handful of times where people will reach out to us, tell us they feel like that's what happened. We can go back to our customer who sent us that card to sell and say, hey.

Here's three don't look like legit bids. It's a zero feedback account. We show they haven't won anything else from us. This is the only item they've bid on. Whatever we can tell from all the data we have available to us.

And we'll go back and go to that seller or that seller who's selling through us and say we do have a buyer who's willing to pay whatever the original bid was, $80 for the cart.

Are you good with that? And if so, we can do second chance offers. We can try to facilitate that happening. We make every effort to do that.

We are more than happy to do that to try to help people because it gets a sale completed for our customer and it improves the buying experience for that buyer. What we can't do that people often expect is, hey.

Can't you just watch all your auctions? And anytime there's a bid that looks questionable, can't you guys go in and come back and send a second chance offer to me to be sure I don't overpay?

Two responses to that. One, at our volume, it's just not possible. Literally is not possible. We cannot hire a whole additional team of bid legitimacy review squad to go check every single bit out there.

The second is a lot of times they will say, well, there were two bids really late, and I don't think they really wanted to win.

I think they just wanted to bid me up. We cannot become judge, jury, and executioner of every account on eBay and whether their intent was to buy or not.

Like, I I I promise, I wish we knew, and I wish there was some great automated way to say we know for a fact, and you only pay your legitimate max, and that's it.

That's just not possible. And so as a result, the advice I tell everybody, bid what you are willing to pay. That's the way eBay works, and you have to go by that rule.

I understand these other factors and how incredibly frustrating it can be for our customers selling through us when they don't get paid because somebody messes with an auction, auction or you really wanna buy a card for your PC and you don't win it because somebody did something else.

Absolutely understand.

But you've just gotta bid what you're comfortable with and if you get outbid, decide whether you wanna keep going or not because that's the only way that, you know, on eBay, you get the little blurb when you place a bid.

Right? Like, by pace placing this bid, you are committing to buy this auction. If you have the highest bid at the close of you know, like, that's true.

And so, it is a tricky situation, but, you know, that's just kind of the way it has to be handled because, otherwise, it it just gets into a he said, she said, I think this, they think that, and you can't always define intent that clearly as much as I wish we could.

There has always been this narrative and conversation that has been going on that is always happening online about big sellers on eBay or other auction houses.

And the thought process is that they look the other way and that big sellers don't ever talk about show bidding.

DC Sports eighty seven is a big big seller. You're here talking about show bidding. Why do you think that perception has always existed with, individuals, you know, bidding or or buying or selling cards?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's point of view. Right? And and I can put myself on the other side of this conversation, and I can understand why it ends up that way.

If there's a card I need that I really, really want, I'm bidding, and I wanna win it. I think I'm gonna win it for x price. And I see these other bids jump in and then I see it sold to a zero feedback, and so I didn't even win the card.

That's frustrating. And oftentimes what happens is that a week later, you see it relisted because a seller like us couldn't get payment from the zero feedback buyer.

So we have to relist it because it's whether you're a seller like us who's consigning or you're selling your own cards, you have to turn around and try to sell that card again because it was a waste of time the first time.

And so when you're on the other side, you just feel frustration. It's I was made to pay more or I lost the chance to own this card.

You look at the bids, you see it with somebody else, and I think what the mindset goes to is these sellers must be chasing an extra buck on this card. They just wanna make more money.

Like I mentioned earlier and I kinda outlined it, it doesn't make sense. We don't wanna make more money. We wanna sell things for the right fair market price because that is the only way that we get paid for completed sales.

That is where our revenue comes from. That is how our consignment customers get paid for their cards. And us doing anything to jeopardize that is objectively a net negative on our business.

We have no desire to do it, which is why we do the reviews we do to try to catch as much of this activity as we can and to address it as immediately and severely as we can and why we continue to press eBay for further options because that's the only way that we can get out ahead of this, where instead of reacting to it, we can actually stop it on the front end.

And those are some of the things like when everyone says, why don't you just block zero feedback buyers? Once upon a time on eBay, you could block zero feedback buyers.

That's no longer an option. You know, that was taken away a while back. I understand, hey. We wanna make this an environment where everybody can buy, and we don't wanna leave a bunch of new customers excluded.

But at the same time, let me tell you, if I had that button, I would hit it tomorrow. There are not enough zero feedback people that matter. It's not going to affect the end auction price because there are so many people on eBay.

We have people trusting us to sell their cards and get them paid for their cards, and I would happily stop a few people from bidding knowing someone else is gonna come in and place those bids.

You know, if you look at, like, a ninety day period, we have something like 200,000 or more all the time unique buyer accounts bidding on our items. Those extra zero feedback guys are not moving the needle for us.

So if that was an option, we would exercise it immediately, but just in the current way eBay is set up, for anyone who doesn't know, and maybe this is worse just educating, you have two options.

You can block based on the number of unpaid items someone has. So if they have more than two unpaid items in a twelve month period is as strict as you can be.

So once they hit two in a year, they're automatically blocked. Or you can limit how much they can buy from you. So you can say if their feedback is below this number, only let them bid on one item at a time, two items at a time.

There is no longer what there used to be where you could say, I will not sell to feedback scores below x, and I could pick zero or one or two or 10 for that number.

And so that's kind of our first line of defense would be to implement that so that those low feedbacks can't buy. We don't have that at our disposal right now. And I know the two big asks we have of eBay are to restore that ability.

And I know they're working on some of these things, but to also do more thorough buyer vetting. You know, how do we be sure that if you are a buyer creating an account, you can only have one account.

You can't have six different accounts and 12 different burners and all these things to go do some of this stuff. And so, yeah, you know, there's there's a lot to it.

I know every time we talk about something here or we kinda dive into a different angle of this, it just leads me bringing up two or three more factors that play in, but it it it just is it's a messy problem in a complicated platform, and trying to tackle it is is not easy.

But, you know, this is kind of the stuff we have to put out there just people understand what position we're in and what we can and can't do, you know, as we try to minimize it.

So I I think I learned something new just in you sharing that and with the unpaid two, like, two or more unpaid items running that filter.

Do do you believe that, like, that filter in and of itself combats some of the show bidding from happening?

I know, ideally, you'd be able to block all zero feedback bidders, and that would probably prevent a majority of this from happening.

But do you feel like the the that first line of defense is is is working at some level? No. Wish I could tell you it did, but here here's my view on that.

I think when you block people who have unpaid item strikes, most often who you're blocking are people whose eyes are bigger than their wallets, who bid and bid and bid and then kinda have this instant buyer's remorse and decide, well, I just won't pay.

Those are the people who accumulate a lot of unpaid item strikes, and as a result of that, you block them.

But again, you can only do it. The the strictest setting you can have is I'll block them once they have their second one in a year.

So, you know, it's like even if they have one, they're not blocked. If they have two, okay. Now I can block them, but then it resets once a year passes.

When we talk specifically about shill bidding, and again, like I said earlier, I mean, intent to drive up an auction to inflate the market on a player or to net more money for yourself by manipulating an auction.

Auction. I think a lot of the times you are not winning. There's two time there's two ways it's usually happening.

You're placing bids along the way to push the price up or you've created a zero feedback account and you win with that account. And then the next time you wanna do it, you just create another zero feedback account.

And so to me, if you really wanna combat that, those those accounts are not usually winning many auctions because they're used for a single purpose and then discarded, and then a new account's created.

And so you have to go a level lower than addressing the results of the wins of those accounts, and you have to attack the quality and and integrity of those accounts as a whole, which is where the zero feedback block would come in.

And that's why I'm just I I don't have confidence in, you know, blocking based on x number of unpaids and x number of months as being really kind of the the effective solution to the problem.

Why why do you think this is such a black box of an issue? I mean, we're sitting here having a conversation around it, and hopefully, this is edge this has been education for me Yeah.

Trying to understand what someone in a business conversations we all can have about what's actually happening can can only help the situation as opposed to, like, these quick fix and Band Aids.

But what like, why why isn't this like, you hear individuals posting and talking about it when they have a negative experience, but this is never, like, a a broader topic that, like, leaders and business leaders in the space and high volume buyers are talking about.

It's just very isolated. Why do you think that is? Yeah. Two two big things, I think. I think for one, nobody really, if you're in the business, likes to talk about something where the narrative is very negative.

And, since I can't fix this problem tomorrow, don't get me wrong, it's it's frustrating for me to talk about too because if I post about it, we get a lot of frustrated people who are both the owners of cards that don't get paid for or buyers of cards who had to pay more.

I I wish I could solve the problem for them, but the best we can do is put some level of education out there and at least be as transparent as I can be, which is having this conversation with you just to talk about what things we do and what things we can't do to try to fix it.

So so that's one. I think two, and specifically this is when we talk about eBay and shill bidding as a problem on eBay. And, you know, not to not to defend eBay here, but we have to remember something.

EBay is comprised of a lot of different verticals. Right? EBay sells clothes and cars and toys and, you know, some Care Bears mug from thirty years ago is worth more money than I would ever know.

Not every one of those markets has a problem like this because in general, this is something where you're dealing with people treating these as investments.

Right? The the the hobby has become very speculative. People are investing and trying to flip cards and do all kinds of things.

And so a platform where they would want to try to gain things like this doesn't really roll over into if I'm buying a new winter jacket on eBay. It it just doesn't.

And so for eBay, massive company, they have to look at how do we implement platform wide changes or how do we, implement changes in a way that are really narrowly targeted at certain categories, certain category IDs, certain buyer types.

And so I will accept that there are a lot of nuance and planning and execution there that something the size of eBay can't just be changed quickly.

And so I think it's a challenging topic people don't always talk about because on eBay's end, there hasn't been yet something to really hit this right at the source. They introduced autopay.

That's helpful. We have seen that reduce unpaid items, but I think that really was targeted at what we UPI is what I would say and anybody does as much as us unpaid items is abbreviation for it. That really helped that.

That was a big problem on eBay. That has helped it a lot for us with people completing it because below certain feedback scores, you have to be signed up for autopay, you have to put a card on file, things like that.

But Shilling is just kind of a whole other monster, and I think because there's not a clear and short term path that, at least, that we've heard from eBay and we partner with them obviously incredibly closely, it's challenging to talk about something you know you can't fix right away.

And, you know, I know that's a that's a unsatisfying answer for a lot of people, but it's the truth.

Yeah. And I think about this from your seat. Like, you're you're you're marketing a service and you're trying to grow your customer base, and you want to deliver an a plus experience for people who are selling through DC Sports.

You wanna ensure that there's gonna be no show bidding on those auctions that, they're running.

You wanna ensure that their items are gonna be paid because we all wanna be paid, and we want our money quick, especially after we, you know, send send all of our cards to, a consignment shop.

How challenging is it for you, as someone who's constantly working on improving experience to not be able to, with 100% shadow of the doubt, guarantee that an individual coming up to you is going to have a absolutely frictionless experience because of all of these outside and external factors, and a lot of them have to do with greed of individuals that are using a platform like eBay.

Yeah. It's it's incredibly frustrating.

And and the thing I would say to our customers, whether you are buying from us on eBay or selling through us as your consignor, is if one of these things is a problem that you run into, just reach out to us.

Like I said, at our volume, we can't promise to go proactively catch every single scenario out there in the market.

But if we find a case where a zero feedback buyer won your card, you don't wanna wait ten days to have it relisted because we can tell what happened there, reach out to us.

We'll cancel the order early. We'll get it relisted. We'll take care of you. If this has happened in a card you were buying from us, we will at the very least investigate the bid activity and the user's bidding on it.

And if we can work out a second chance offer with the seller, we'll do that for you. Like, we will make those efforts, because that is the most we can commit to doing.

If I say we're gonna do anything else, if I say we're gonna make the problem go away, if I say we're gonna go block the zero feedbacks, those are all things I either literally cannot do or at the very least would try and not be able to do fully.

And so I I think we just have to ask that people trust us as a seller who has talked more about this and tried to put ourselves more out there in terms of combating it the ways we can than any other seller has, that we're gonna continue to make those efforts.

But it you know, it's just a process, and and we've gotta work through it.

It's an unfortunate problem on the platform. And I think as eBay takes it, you know, seriously and gets used to try to roll out fixes, hopefully, over time, we see it become less and less and less of one.

But some of those things are gonna have to move, you know, long term before we can look at a seller and say, hey.

This is really not much of a problem anymore because there's just too many people who are looking out for themselves and themselves only.

And, unfortunately, they've found the means to try to achieve that. I consume a lot of content, and I'm not sure I can remember, listening or watching a conversation, from someone sitting in your seat around a topic like this.

So I think this has been really good for me and, hopefully, the audience out there to understand, the the mindset of someone working at in an operation like DC Sports and how you think about showbidding and combat it.

Before we kinda move on to the final topic of the chat, I wanna make sure we we covered a lot of ground. We went deep. Was there anything regarding Shale Bidding that you wanted to talk about that we didn't necessarily get to?

No. I I think we hit it. I think, you know, just, you know, all I would say is protect yourself. So if you are a seller and you're selling a card through us or on your own, take DC Sports out of this.

If you're on your own and you see somebody who's a zero feedback and you can't communicate with them, if you're selling on your own, shoot them a message.

Send a payment reminder. If that doesn't get you anywhere, don't be shy about canceling and relisting that card.

Like, sometimes you just have to do it. And if you're a buyer, just be smart about your bids. Know when you're bidding, how much you're bidding, and be careful not to overextend yourself.

Outside of that, trust that if you're working with us, we're doing as much as we possibly can, and we are consistently in our communications with eBay and our many, many conversations with them bringing up this topic because we know a lot of this change has to come from the top, and, you know, we're one level below the top.

EBay is the top, we're next. And so, you know, we we know that they are going to do that. It's just about continuing to put more and more resources behind it. But, no. I think we I think we hit a lot.

I don't doubt this will trigger questions for some people. I'm happy to answer those at another time, but, yeah. Nothing nothing I think we skipped wholesale in there. Awesome. As we close this out, I wanna hit this.

August, April in online sales number, which is, recorded in card ladder, which is the all time high by, a $100,000,000. Right? Same month that the almost $13,000,000 MJ and Kobe logo men sale happened.

But that card, although the biggest card we've seen, is just a fraction of the the macro number, the sales volume during that time is insane. It's just, like, staggering numbers.

And so I've been just trying to have conversations with as many people as I interact with to talk about that number and just try to get a perspective. Like, it's an undeniable. We've been talking about this on the show forever.

Like, we're in a bull market. It's crazy. But, like, it continues to elevate at unprecedented heights. Like, when you're thinking about it, on a day to day basis and just the growth happening across the industry?

Like, what what what are the factors that you think are at play that you're thinking about that's causing this to happen at the rate it's happening right now in 2025? Yeah. No. The growth has been crazy, which is exciting for everybody.

Same for us. I think August, we ended up at, like, 8,400,000. 0 on eBay. And so, that's a massive one month number for us. That that was a a high for us, which is super exciting.

But, two things I look at, I mean, I think one, you know, we see everybody talking about mister wonderful buying the card and, you know, you get some of these high profile people in.

I think there are we've talked about this, you and I, a number of times, but this every month as the hobby keeps growing, there's new people.

New people means new money. New money means more spending. And so, I think the market continues to transact more and more, which is healthy.

The other thing is I I think there's just a shift towards singles. I I hope it's happening because I think wax prices are outrageous. You know, one of the worst examples recently for me was when Topps Inception Baseball came out.

And so 2024 Topps Inception Baseball, I think it was selling at, like, 330 to $350 a box. We are talking about a one hit product. So you're opening this and you're getting, you know, one auto in that pack.

Even if you got a Skins RPA out of that pack, okay, I understand that means you're in the positive. But how many players can we honestly say are gonna put you positive at that price point?

And there's just not that many. And so I think there are some people whose eyes are opening to the extremely high prices of wax and are being smart and are instead targeting, hey.

I know vintage has been climbing lately. It's not a it's not an acute sharp hockey stick climb, but it is slowly and steadily appreciating over time, so it's a very safe investments.

I think people are looking at, hey. I'd rather buy into a player and follow the risk of his market going up and down than maybe buy into a bunch of sealed product and just scratch that lottery ticket and not know what I'm gonna get.

And so I think as I I don't have numbers to back this up.

This is, you know, people I know, what I see in talking to people, I think there is a reallocation of spend from some sealed product over into singles, and that leads to when we look at, like, this card lighter data and things like that.

Some of these rises, and things happening there.

So as you have more people investing these in the, you know, alternative asset class, we all use that term in the hobby now because everybody's talking about it, and then people making some just decisions to go singles over sealed.

I think those two plus the new people in alone is enough to to create the bull market we're seeing and to mean that we've got reason to believe it continues to climb.

Obviously, we wanna work on things and work in businesses that are growing.

This industry is on fire. It's a lot of fun. There are definitely it's not all roses, but I think it's been, fun to talk about some of those challenges and obstacles.

Before I get let you get out of here, Tory, what's right now, like, what's exciting you most about what's happening across the industry?

Yeah. I mean, just just the number of people we're seeing sell. I think we've seen a lot more people too, who are finally kind of getting more diverse in what they do in the hobby, and I and I think that's really exciting.

People who I know just kinda got into it with breaking because a friend turned them on to a breaker who was really cool.

They kinda tried it out, and now those people are realizing, hey. I've got all these cards, so they start to sell some.

And then when they sell those cards, they've got cash back in their pocket and kinda watching some of those people go through that, like, hobby, savvy, mature you know, maturity of realizing what singles do I wanna go invest in and things like that.

And so, just the more and more of that we see, and then the more and more technology keeps being introduced.

You know, you're seeing repacks turning into digital repacks and all the new innovations we've seen from fanatics and tops and things like that.

So, yeah, just just the fact that it's not just a top line, you know, sales number growth, but it's the number of people involved growth.

It's technology growth. It's, the channels people are using. It's just it's cool that all those things are contributing to it.

This was a awesome conversations. One of my favorites of the batch so far. We'll be back again next week with another one. Thank you everyone for tuning in to the staging area. Tory, always a blast. Thanks.