Raising the bid to a tie and then stop bidding.

[theultimatebrucelee]

Personally when I bid on something I put in a absolute minimum bid that puts me as the high bidder. Then using our system put in a snipe bid for my true maximum. That way you have a secure bid, others think you're just bidding low if they do bid early, then BAM big bid near the end for the true amount you want.

I usually don't even bother with a start bid early but rather, simply enter a snipe with full bid at the end, that way early on no one knows whos really bidding on the auction. And I think many bidders on YJA does this. I don't quite see the point of registering my bid early on to tell others that I'm bidding on the auction.

Wow! Sorry dude! Seriously if it looks like a rat, smells like a rat......well you get the picture.

Looking at the Bid history, you definitely got 'shilled'. It would have been an amazing 'coincidence' for "pol" to suddenly stop bidding right on your Max.Bid.

I think I got partial shilled. I'm pretty sure this "pol" person is a genuine bidder by looking at his past feedback and bidding against him in the past. I was in fact bidding on another auction against him at same time: http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d146431583 at the time my set is at 70K+yen where the bidding pace seemed normal. After 76K, it went up by 2K at a time, I think that's when he decided that he should let me eat my full bid because he couldn't out bid me. I decided to let the other set go early hoping that he would stop bidding on this one. But, I guess I got shilled at the end. I would have had no problem if the ending price was around 70k-80k yen, as that's what the nearby sequence of this went for last time without me bidding. But, I'm ok with paying that extra too as long as I won, since that is my max bid.

That actually brings up a true suspect of shill bidding. If you look at the auction I just posted, under the proxy I used, theres another bidder that goes by "hug". This bidder come out of no where, and with one single bid, he maxed me out. If there's doubt on that, check out these as well: http://page7.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g130088717, http://page16.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/u53133216, http://page7.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g124507646. One single bid each time in the last few minutes of auction to max me out, how weird is that?? What's even more strange, this "hug" person only bid on the auctions I bid on and not any other from the same series. that's actually why I decided to switch to a different proxy on the set I won, and sure enough, the "hug" person didn't show up. But why not? if "hug" is a true fan of the show, he should've at least attempted to out bid me as that's a defining set of sketch for the character and the price was low at one point. And if this "hug" is not a 'fan' of the show, I don't think he'd try to bid 33500yen with one single bid now would he? But again, if he is a fan, when bidding just once, sees my max bid(again, easily done with the minimum increment thing) another 200-600yen he could've out bid me, but why doesn't he try to? So long story short, I think this "hug" bidder is much more suspicious and might not have in fact be a genuine bidder.

[Animechaos]

Looks like we won those for you, and I was a bit curious so ran a history search on those items. Nothing fishy showed up in the logs, but that only shows nobody tried to outbid you using our service.

Try the start bid thing, it might work might not, but that doesn't actually smell like a typical shill bidder. If you think about it they're not stepping up the auction, just seems more like a large blind bid if they're doing it.

I think I know the most probable reason but depends how much the other comparable auctions are going for. It may be the seller "shill" bidding, but blindly bidding an amount they want the auction to go for. Almost like a reserve price after the fact, which is very much wrong.

If you can put a case together and email us the info I'll have the Tokyo staff contact YHJ on the matter. But again, it could just be some weird coincidence.

Who knows, could be someone got mad at us for winning so many nice sketches and cels.

[theultimatebrucelee]

but that doesn't actually smell like a typical shill bidder. If you think about it they're not stepping up the auction, just seems more like a large blind bid if they're doing it.

I would disagree. I do think this ID is actually doing some shill bidding. Single blind bid would have been the likely scenario, but when its more than a few times, with each time pushing the bid to the max within one or few bids, then its simply way too much coincidence.

It may be the seller "shill" bidding, but blindly bidding an amount they want the auction to go for. Almost like a reserve price after the fact, which is very much wrong.

I would have thought of that as well, but coincidentally a fellow member on this board sent me some links after reading my post, that would suggest that this bidder ID appeared on other seller's auctions as well. And, did the same thing to these other winners as it did to me.

http://page10.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/a ... m116035967

http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d141235667

http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f125203468

could be someone got mad at us for winning so many nice sketches and cels.

I would agree to that, I think someone is deliberately trying to give a hard time to SMJ users. But, I believe the max bid of those users was unexpectedly leaked in someway. Otherwise those bids won't be so accurate as to pushing the "cha" ID's bid to max from one single bid up to just a few bids. One thing I want to mention, as a semi regular user for SMJ, I only find this "hug" ID under bidding record with the "cha" of low feedback. When my bid was placed with the "cha" ID with a five digit feedback, this never happens, at least from what I'm aware of.

Sorry Nick if it looks like I'm giving you and your business a hard time. But that's not the point, if it seemed like it. As a somewhat regular SMJ user myself, I think that its important to point out this kind of stuff and make other users aware of the potential problems. But I hope you would understand, including me, I don't think anyone would feel right if they have to pay extra money because someone out there is messing around with their bids which is intended for the artwork only. I really hope to see this issue addressed promptly.

And, if you think this is too much of an issue and would hurt your business in unfathomable way, then I will delete this post and not mention it again. Because again, my purpose of this post is only to make aware and address the issue, in hope to see a solution for the problem.

[Killua]

I would have thought of that as well, but coincidentally a fellow member on this board sent me some links after reading my post, that would suggest that this bidder ID appeared on other seller's auctions as well. And, did the same thing to these other winners as it did to me.

http://page10.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/a ... m116035967

http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d141235667

http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f125203468

That's pretty fishy looking.

[Animechaos]

Hmm....it's possible we have an auction stalker in that case. I'll see what I can do to stop them. Easiest way is to just change our ID for cel and sketch auctions, but if this person is shilling they need to be banned.

And, if you think this is too much of an issue and would hurt your business in unfathomable way, then I will delete this post and not mention it again.

Bu no means. If we're getting stalked it's probably just a matter of time before they do that to others and may already have been. It's something we need to take action on.

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

I've also had interesting contesting bidders when bidding through Shopping Mall Japan. Won't stop me from using the service because it's the best, IMO.... but I've had many auctions mini-bid up like this to my max then drop as soon as my max is reached. Some even for relatively tiny amounts. I remember for one auction my max was something very low like 1300 or 1400yen.... auction started at something like 500 yen and there was a bidder who plinked the bid up to my max, then stopped as soon as they found my max. Which seemed ridiculous. Since this happened a lot when I put in an early bid, I've tried more and more to never bid ahead of time.

I've only seen one incident that I suspected might be someone using SMJ's internal bidding service to find my max bid, but can't be more specific because it was well over a year ago.... I won and scratched my head at what I saw in the bidding history, but never bothered to think a lot more of it.

It's curious to see someone else having this same problem.... Had I known, I would have kept better notes.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac

[Animechaos]

If they tried to use our service like that it would show up in our history logs, everything is documented, and it's the first thing I checked.

The staff and I have been looking into it and from what we can tell its seems one of these sellers are using different alternate accounts to drive prices up. Nothing solid but it's looking that way. We know many cel/sketch sellers have multiple accounts on YHJ to list items. But seems to only be this recent wave. Been keeping an eye on other cel/sketch auctions and haven't seen "hug" pop up.

[theultimatebrucelee]

This 'hug' ID seems to show up for quite a bit of auctions, not just for artwork categories. If it appears again and again in the future just so it can max out our bids, would it be possible to report it to Yahoo Japan as a shiller ID?

[Animechaos]

Already ahead of ya. But if you can email us sample links please do, more the better.

[darksuzaku]

What AnimeChaos said. I have known it for a long time and said it here several times: Always place your bids in an amount that corresponds to one of the minimum increments of YJ auctions or you risk yourself to be victim of one of those malicious bidders that rise the bids up to your maximum (specially if he knows you act this way).

By using an amount that corresponds to a multiple of the minimum bid the only way a bidder has to know your bid is being lucky and introducing the same bid as you. If this happens to you it's not necesarilly a shill bid or a malicious bid. There are chances that the bidder doesn't realize he has tied your bid.

If you want to be more secure, try to not use bid amounts that would make people think "he probably bid this or that". That is, for example, if you plan to bid 80000Y, bid 81000 or 82000 or even 79000, as 80000 looks like a "round" number for someone trying to figure your bid. If you are having a bid war at the end of an auction with someone don't feel afraid of the other guy outbidding you and forcing you to bid again. It may induce the other bidder to think that you are reaching your limit (which may or not may be true), but at the same time makes him unable to figure what your maximum bid is, making it impossible to shill bid you because he will never be sure if you will outbid him the next time.

And one more advice, if placing bids on similar items at the same time be very careful not to place the same or very similar bids on both items. When the first auction ends the other bidders may figure your bidding pattern for the other items and some might retaliate making you pay a hefty sum for all auctions.

Ideally, the best thing to do in my opinion is to wait for the bid at the very end whenever it's possible. Bids atract more bids and you want to avoid that. Sometimes a "marking" bid of an small amount may be necesary, for example if you suspect the seller might cancel the auctions because of lack of interest that he/she expected.

[theultimatebrucelee]

I don't remember the last time I placed a round number bid, and I always place the bid at the very end of auction. But in the cases I've mentioned before, doing both of them did not help me, but really there is just so much one can do to prevent this kind of things from happening. I can literally be sitting in front of the computer watching the shiller jack the bid to my max during overtime extension and do nothing about it. I haven't seen any shiller in the recent week, so I guess SMJ's reporting took care of it. Definitely need to work on the not bidding on similar items with similar price part as I tend to value those kind of items around the same amount, good advise.

[sensei]

Here's our "hug" bidder at work again, with some odd wrinkles.

http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e143114885

Auction started at 1000 yen, and last night before I went to bed I lodged a "snipe" bid large enough to get it. This morning I received a message from SMJ that I had been outbid. On checking the auction, I found that there was one bid on the item, from one "tou*****" which I assumed was an external bid. I settled in to wait for the SMJ bid to kick in, refreshing the page every 30 seconds or so. Much to my surprise, the SMJ bid did not kick in. So in the final seconds I manually entered in my upped reserve bid, which topped "tou's" bid and started the auction extension.

Instantly, "hug*****" came in with a single bid that was 50 yen lower than my reserve.

I'm wondering if "hug" hasn't found a way to hack into the SMJ site and gain access to/mess with bids. The behavior of the auction was very odd (I've been using SMJ for over ten years) and it does seem as if the other bidder has been able to access information from the bidding site almost instantaneously.

[Animechaos]

Very unlikely. I can't go into detail but a lot of precautions, and probably very overprotective measures, are taken with our site.

From what you described our system would have detected the price of the auction went over your bid. That's when the outbid notice goes out. And it was external, not another SMJ user. History logs show another SMJ user did try to outbid you but they weren't close.

So unless they have your user/pswd for SMJ, or can somehow get through YHJ itself, it's not possible even for myself and the staff until after the auction close.

[sensei]

From what you described our system would have detected the price of the auction went over your bid. That's when the outbid notice goes out. And it was external, not another SMJ user.

Odd though. My reserve snipe bid was (IIRC) 6500 yen. The external bid was 1000 yen, with a reserve of 5100 yen. Even if the snipe bid had been under 5100, would not it still have been placed, with the outbid notice going to me when it failed to top the first bidder's reserve? Or does SMJ have a way of finding out from Yahoo Japan what the other bidder's top bid is going to be?

Anyhow I didn't learn that figure until I manually entered my new reserve bid, which I did suspecting that maybe "tou*****," the bidder then showing as the high bid, might be a new ID for SMJ. Result: I was then the high bid at 5150 (which I would have been anyhow had my snipe bid not been canceled overnight).

By the time I had moved over to refresh the item page (when I bid I leave that open in one window and have the SMJ bidding page open in another), the new bid of 9900 had just been lodged by our friend "hug*****." So it came almost instantaneously and not as a series of "nibble" bids, and (judging from other reports in this thread) it seemed to been placed with foreknowledge of what my SMJ reserve was.

I've never seen bidding like this before in my experience with SMJ (going back to Dec. 2002). A sympathetic Japanside observer, who looked over the auction record, said it looked like "an inside job" to him/her. Perhaps your procedures are secure enough to eliminate this possibility, but it does look suspicious, both to SMJ users and to other collectors.

[Animechaos]

We're definitely trying to get YHJ's attention regarding the "hug" individual. I can post the history log here if you like (I'll just remove the other persons username so it's kept private).

But spending a couple hours checking logs from year-to-date, a random sample and multiple sellers, I found something pretty curious.....

1) Only happens with cel/sketch auctions.

2) It's on a very very small sample, but the same "pattern" happens over and over again with other usernames showing up. Including bids from other deputy/competitors accounts. Ones we don't win are often outbid similarly, meaning someone else bids up the auction and looks to be close to their reserve, but doesn't involve SMJ or this "hug***" person.

3) ....and this might be the oddest or most worrisome one...but I'm pretty certain that the bids from this "hug***" individual.....are all against Anime-Beta members. I can't find a single instance where "hug***" has bid on an item where a non-beta member was involved. I could be wrong considering I just took a random sample, and have not gone through thousands of auctions, but I find that incredibly strange and hope it's not the case. We'll have multiple bids on multiple items from the same seller over the course of months, and only a few are bid up, all that I can relate to a Beta member.