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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Julian who wrote (52334)	8/20/1999 3:10:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Auctions always run up in the last hour- I never place my bid until 15-20 seconds before the auction ends. There are people who bookmark you and stalk everything you bid on, but if you wait until the last minute to bid they can't do that. If you have good taste, Karma, and know something about rugs, people are probably bookmarking your bidding list and coming in at the end to steal rugs away from you. I think it is rare for a seller to use shills- at least it is rare in the categories I buy. I see the same bidders, time and time again- so I know they are legit. Only once did I find a shill- I will tell you how it happened. I was bidding on a piece, and I had to go out- so uncharacteristically I left a bid. When I returned home I found that a person had bid over my bid, then retracted their bid, and then bid up to just under my highest bid. I wrote to the seller and pointed this out. i said I would be happy to pay one dollar more than the next legitimate bidder, but that I was not willing to be in a bidding contest with a strawman bidder (no feedback- the only other auction this character had bid on was another auction by the same seller- now THAT's suspicious). I did not accuse the seller of anything- I merely told him I would buy the piece for one dollar over the last legit bidder's bid (a bidder whom I knew, and knew was legit) or he could try to sell it to the other bidders- and I also wrote to the other high legitimate bidder and urged her, if the piece was offered to her, to pay no more than her highest bid- and not to let the seller use the fake bidder. The seller sold to me for one dollar over the legitimate bidder below me, and he called the fake bidder a "scallywag", which gave me and my friends quite a laugh since we are sure the scallywag was either the seller or a friend of the seller. These kinds of things are rare- and if you bid on items by sellers with plenty of positive feedback, you don't have much to worry about.