Do GunBroker sellers bid up prices?

rogersmithiii

NES Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
2,775
Likes
4,025
Feedback: 0 / 0 / 0
Do sellers on Gunbroker bid up prices to control the final sales price on their auctions? Or is the bidding process fair and honest?
I put in a high bid for an item, and the auction ended up coming right up to my bid before I won the deal.
I'm wondering if sellers can see those high bids, and submit fake ones to reach your high.

Thanks
 
Do sellers on Gunbroker bid up prices to control the final sales price on their auctions? Or is the bidding process fair and honest?
I put in a high bid for an item, and the auction ended up coming right up to my bid before I won the deal.
I'm wondering if sellers can see those high bids, and submit fake ones to reach your high.

Thanks
If there is an online auction site and the bidders are not heavily vetted.... you can be damn sure that there is always some level of shilling going on. I don't think they can see what the high water mark is but in some cases they're going to make educated guesses and they'll get pretty close..... but honestly what difference does it make you should never put in a number that you're not willing to pay...... I realize people think that they can skinflint and get some kind of a bargain through auctions but that's not usually the reality.....
 
i'm sure there's a cadre of shill bidders the auction seller employs to drive up the price if the auction is not going well.

remember, in the early days of ebay, it was so common, ebay put a procedure in place that a bidders bid history was made public to other bidders while the auction was in progress. helpful if you saw the majority of that bidders bids were for items offered by this particular seller in other auctions run by them. if all their bids were for auctions run by one guy you could only draw one conclusion. if you suspected funny business, that history helped call out the participants all around. don't know if it is still used now or not.
 
If there is an online auction site and the bidders are not heavily vetted.... you can be damn sure that there is always some level of shilling going on. I don't think they can see what the high water mark is but in some cases they're going to make educated guesses and they'll get pretty close..... but honestly what difference does it make you should never put in a number that you're not willing to pay...... I realize people think that they can skinflint and get some kind of a bargain through auctions but that's not usually the reality.....
I don't consider GB a real auction any more than I do eBay. And you're right, you won't see any great deals there. And I'm sure there are sellers bidding up their own stuff. But exposing the max bid amounts to the seller would be a major issue and if they did and it was ever suspected, that would be the end of GB. So, no it probably doesn't happen.
Rock Island is a real auction, and there are a couple auction houses in the area that occasionally have gun auction. At these you can get some good deals but you need to take the good with the not so good, because the deals will be in multi-gun lots. I picked up a lot of 4 because it had one VZ57 I wanted. The other 3 were C&R SKSs including a new condition Norinco that takes AK mags (preban and AK mags). Selling the SKSs will cover the total cost of the lot, I get a free VZ57. And this isn't an isolated thing.
 
i recently won an auction on GB. The item started at .01 cent. I waited a few days and put a high bid in of $700.00 which is what i was willing to pay. I won it for $235.00 I was happy.
I dont believe the sellers can see what the high bids are. If the seller doesnt want the item to go lower than a certain price, they can put a RESERVE price on it to protect themselves. Some have BUY IT NOW prices to entice buyers also......
 
Easy simple answer

100% fact that some GB sellers bid up their own items or have their friends do it for them
like they say, in a bushel of apples you're gonna find a couple of rotten ones. Do your homework before bidding and check the sellers reviews and feedback score. There are more honest ones than dishonest ones on GB.
 
Yes, live auction house auctions are more above board than online ones, but online ones don't charge you up to 20% on top of your winning bid as a "buyer's premium". I know they have to print those pretty catalogs [rolleyes] (which most everyone now has to buy) but the seller should be the only one paying the auctioneer.
 
Other gun-enthusiast sites have a lot of speculation about this precise question, but my usual response (both in forums and on GB when I bid) is to agree with @drgrant in post #2: if I enter a bid, I need to be prepared to actually pay that money. That way, when the final number comes close to what I bid, it's no biggie; if it comes in below, I look at it as a discount.
 
Other gun-enthusiast sites have a lot of speculation about this precise question, but my usual response (both in forums and on GB when I bid) is to agree with @drgrant in post #2: if I enter a bid, I need to be prepared to actually pay that money. That way, when the final number comes close to what I bid, it's no biggie; if it comes in below, I look at it as a discount.
This. If you're not going to snipe* them, this is the only way.

* Assuming auction sniper doesn't work with GB, you'd do this manually: set an alert in your calendar with a link to the auction of interest (do not watch it within the site) in the last few minutes of the auction, enter your max bid and then either win or don't.
 
On another milsurp forum I'm on there's a few sellers most won't touch because they have a reputation for shill bidding. Basically, mundane items regularly going for top of the market prices, often driven by users with little to no feedback, etc.

But as others have said, don't go into an auction expecting to get a screaming deal; they can happen, but they're the exception and not the rule.

I've bought plenty on GB, but never more than I was willing and prepared to pay.
 
I will usually stop bidding when an "NR" or account with 1-3 feedback on small items starts going bid for bid towards the end of the auction. Either its a shill or an idiot that may or may not actually pay for the item.
 
i recently won an auction on GB. The item started at .01 cent. I waited a few days and put a high bid in of $700.00 which is what i was willing to pay. I won it for $235.00 I was happy.
I dont believe the sellers can see what the high bids are. If the seller doesnt want the item to go lower than a certain price, they can put a RESERVE price on it to protect themselves. Some have BUY IT NOW prices to entice buyers also......
I sometimes do this for brass and other items.

I search for an item, if there are 10 sellers selling it, I go to the lowest price without a bid and throw a max I am willing to pay then forget about it until one day I either get a message I won or I was outbid.
 
Yes, live auction house auctions are more above board than online ones, but online ones don't charge you up to 20% on top of your winning bid as a "buyer's premium". I know they have to print those pretty catalogs [rolleyes] (which most everyone now has to buy) but the seller should be the only one paying the auctioneer.
FYI Rock Island is on-line with sealed bids and streaming. You can also do conditional bids, say you want to bid on 4 lots A, B, C, and D. But if you win A you either don't want to bid on C or want to bid with a lower max. You can lay this out in advance and just let it ride. And they have a 17.5% buyers premium, actually came down .5%, you just figure that into your limit.

What sucks is when you look at the sell prices of lots you didn't bid on and see them go so low you'd have bought them just because.. When they do a really big auction the lots near the end tend to go for less, I've seen some super low bids win.
 
I have gotten some excellent deals on Gunbroker. Basically, I set a price I am willing to go for a chosen item and place my max bid. It's usually quite a bit lower than I can buy it for locally, mainly because I don't "need" it. If it goes over, I move on to the next and put in the same bid.

I've scored some great deals on items that were poorly described so they were harder to find in the search. But you have to be hard nosed on your bid, don't get caught up in the chase. Although I did that once with something I really wanted, but pulled the plug when the bids reached ludicrous levels. Some poor bastard overpaid big time for a 45-70 Marlin...
 
Last edited:
What sucks is when you look at the sell prices of lots you didn't bid on and see them go so low you'd have bought them just because.. When they do a really big auction the lots near the end tend to go for less, I've seen some super low bids win.
But you will never know if that bargin you missed at $300 could have been picked up for $310 or if you bidding would have pushed that particular buyer up to $600. And some auctions have anti-snipe by extending the auction for a few minutes every time a bid comes in. Just remember, the auctioneer's first loyalty is to themselves, then to their customer - the seller.
 
Rock Island has a lot of 1911 coming up for auction.
Meh, I got two in a lot with 2 1903A3s, brand new Remingtons, I keep meaning to put them up here, but I suffer terminal procrastination.
 
But you will never know if that bargin you missed at $300 could have been picked up for $310 or if you bidding would have pushed that particular buyer up to $600. And some auctions have anti-snipe by extending the auction for a few minutes every time a bid comes in. Just remember, the auctioneer's first loyalty is to themselves, then to their customer - the seller.
First part is true, not knowing just adds to the aggravation. The second part, I'm talking about Rock Island, a real action, they have a guy with a gavel, there is no behind the scenes. To be honest, I don't think the auctioneer is loyal to anyone other then the auction house, as it should be.

I just can't think of GB as a real auction, I've been to all kinds of auction and they are just very different from what GB and eBay do. Not all is good or bad. GB and eBay have "sellers", you pay the seller and deal with them, at auctions you pay and deal with the auction house. And at an auction the auctioneer's word is final, if he sa7ys something and it conflicts with the catalog, it's his word that binds. And sales are final, you bid, you, win, you get off the property by X day, if it doesn't work or isn't what you expected, too F'ing bad. There are exceptions for clear mistakes in facts, if they say it was made in 1945 and it was made in 1946 they will probably take it back. It's these risks that keep the prices down and make some winning bids great deals.

I wish they stil did the live postal auctions in NYC, that was an experience, 4K-5K items in a day lightning fast, can't actually touch anything before hand, and all cash sales. There were guys there that would buy bin after bin of music and video CD/DVDs they had to be lined up outside in the morning with 100K in cash, going into a building that didn't allow guns. Always wondered why some criminal didn't go for it.
 
FYI Rock Island is on-line with sealed bids and streaming. You can also do conditional bids, say you want to bid on 4 lots A, B, C, and D. But if you win A you either don't want to bid on C or want to bid with a lower max. You can lay this out in advance and just let it ride. And they have a 17.5% buyers premium, actually came down .5%, you just figure that into your limit.

What sucks is when you look at the sell prices of lots you didn't bid on and see them go so low you'd have bought them just because.. When they do a really big auction the lots near the end tend to go for less, I've seen some super low bids win.
Yup. I won my collector grade desert eagle set from rock island back in the summer. Threw in my max bid (which was low) and no one outbid me shockingly.
As you said, it’s possible it was a later lot in the auction (they had thousands) and went for less
 
Do sellers on Gunbroker bid up prices to control the final sales price on their auctions? Or is the bidding process fair and honest?
I put in a high bid for an item, and the auction ended up coming right up to my bid before I won the deal.
I'm wondering if sellers can see those high bids, and submit fake ones to reach your high.

Thanks
Is a five pound Canary fat?
 
I never thought of actually bidding on something at GB. I don’t have the patience for that. If the item doesn’t have a “buy now” button I move on to another seller that does. I may have to give this “bidding” thing a try.
 
I never thought of actually bidding on something at GB. I don’t have the patience for that. If the item doesn’t have a “buy now” button I move on to another seller that does. I may have to give this “bidding” thing a try.
Careful, GB is a gateway to real auctions, next thing you know you'll be in some poorly lit auction hall giddy with excitement as you tell yourself it's just one more bid and you'll win, knowing you are way over budget and beyond what it would cost new, but you can win this....😅
 
Do sellers on Gunbroker bid up prices to control the final sales price on their auctions? Or is the bidding process fair and honest?
I put in a high bid for an item, and the auction ended up coming right up to my bid before I won the deal.
I'm wondering if sellers can see those high bids, and submit fake ones to reach your high.

Thanks
Yes
 
Back
Top Bottom