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Originally Posted by init4fun
The "gent" you are discussing is "Radios 10467" on Ebay . He has been proven time and again to use shill bidders , and for proof all one needs to do is to go to the "Antique Radio Forums" site and type radios 10467 into the search bar there . Course , you should do this when you've got an hour or few to kill , in order to have time to read all the negative threads that come up on that scammer ! Any guy whose got 16 negative ratings out of less than 1500 completed transactions on Ebay for the past year is someone to steer clear of no matter what he is selling . Guys like him do great harm to the hobby with his sky high prices and phony bidders . I can recall at least 5 different desirable radios he "sold" for crazy high prices , only to turn around in a month or few and list the exact same radio for sale again ! Now if it WAS a "completed sale' , and not a shill bidder , just how could he offer and sell the same radio twice ? Like you , I am and have always been into the collecting hobby for the preservation of electronic technology from the early years , rather than to turn a quick buck from the unsuspecting public who thinks it'd be cool to have an old radio on the mantle , but have no education on fair prices for the average old set .
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Yes, a lot has been written about Eric over there, and a lot of it is true, but also a lot of people are just jumping on the bandwagon accusing him of using shills in auctions where the evidence just doesn't support those claims. I myself have seen and accused him of reselling the same radio repeatedly, and I am convinced he uses (or used) shills at times. But most of his auctions seem to have legitimate deep-pocketed buyers that also spend a lot of money on other people's auctions, so those accounts do not support all the shill accusations.
His tactics and ethics are often questionable with some legitimacy, but it really does appear that most of his auctions are "real".
As far as having about 1% of his auctions getting bad feedback, that is not that unusual when the seller is offering high-dollar items and over-inflating their descriptions. People are a lot less likely to complain when buying $25 items than they will when they spend 10 to 20 times that amount. Obviously a lot of the radios are not going to be as good as they look in the pictures and not bring the joy to the buyer as promised in the descriptions. A lot of buyers will have "buyers remorse" after they get the radio in their hands and see it is not 100% as described. Eric likes to hype all the good things about his stuff, while avoiding mentioning (or showing in the pictures) their faults. In such cases, it is not unusual for a sale to not go through, or the item gets returned and thus gets relisted and sold again. His methods are no different than the salesmanship tactics used car dealers have employed for generations.
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