Anxiety set in for a sports card collector when the value of the playing cards he consigned on the market on Alt, a outstanding on-line public sale home and market for buying and selling playing cards, appeared destined to fall properly quick of their appraised values with in the future remaining on the public sale. Fearing such a state of affairs, the consignor, a middle-aged man who had by no means bought a card by an public sale home, had requested an Alt worker by way of textual content messages about a plan in which his brother would bid on the playing cards.
This can be a textbook case of “shill bidding,” which is when a person locations bids on an merchandise in order to control its value, desirability or perceived worth to both profit themselves or a consignor.
“My brother depending on the auction price, was interested in the vini (an Adam Vinatieri 2025 Donruss Optic Downtown Gold insert card with a PSA 10 grade),” the consignor despatched on Nov. 3, 2025 in a textual content dialog with the Alt consultant, which was reviewed by The Athletic. “I told him idk (I don’t know) if that’s allowed or not for him to bid on the card and that I’d ask.”
The consignor, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of of the potential authorized jeopardy, informed The Athletic that at the time, he didn’t know a lot about shill bidding. But an account supervisor from Alt, which launched in March 2021, answered, “As long as the item is paid we have no problem with whoever bids,” the Alt worker wrote again.
“Apart from myself (I’m) assuming?” the consignor requested.
“If you won your own card and it was paid, (it) wouldn’t be a problem either. “If (you’re) bidding it up with no intent to pay, they would have a problem. Haha,” the Alt worker responded.
With this, each Alt and the consignor had been getting into questionable territory associated to the firm’s coverage on shill bidding, which prohibits “any action that manipulates, or is intended to manipulate, the pricing or fair market value of any Assets or other items (including, without limitation, placing any bids to artificially raise prices or enhance market desirability, commonly known as ‘shill bidding’), or (placing) offers or bids on any Assets or other items on behalf of others.”
Often troublesome to show conclusively, shill bidding is a frequent suspicion in the collectibles world, the place current public sale costs are used to find out present worth. Bad actors can use shill bidding to artificially inflate valuations of particular person gadgets and get unwitting patrons to pay greater than true market worth. This can have a domino impact that impacts an increasing number of patrons and sellers, as these manipulated values are used to find out every successive sale of a given card sort.
The consignor informed The Athletic he then signed his brother up for an Alt account, utilizing the similar telephone quantity and e-mail tackle for his brother’s account that he used for his personal.
In the closing hours of the public sale, the consignor despatched a message to the Alt worker: “Yeah I just spoke with my brother and told him he will not be paying for the cards if he wins …”
The auctions of the Vinatieri card, and a number of other others Alt bought for the consignor, completed with the brother successful. The consignor despatched the Alt worker one other message a few hours after the auctions closed saying his brother wouldn’t be paying and the consignor needed to speak about different choices. The Alt worker responded with a thumbs up emoji.
Alt offered a assertion to The Athletic: “The facts are that: the customer and brother involved in this matter were banned after admitting in writing that bids were placed with no intent to pay; a junior employee early in his tenure gave a response inconsistent with our policy and the issue was addressed internally; and Alt maintains a 98% payment rate across all auctions, the highest in the industry.”
The Athletic has confirmed that the Alt junior worker nonetheless works for the firm.
“I did regret doing this. truthfully,” the consignor mentioned. “I felt like such an idiot once it went down the way it did. If they would have told me I can’t do it, I would have for sure been like, ‘Well, it is what it is. … I wasn’t sure if this was even legal. And that’s why I asked the question.”
In many locations it’s not authorized.
The Federal Trade Commission factors to shill bidding being unlawful inside the FTC’s Internet auctions guide, saying a vendor “can’t place ‘shill’ bids on your item to boost the price.”
It’s troublesome to say how pervasive shill bidding is throughout the collectibles market, however in current months, a number of incidents have fueled rising considerations over simply how widespread it could possibly be.
Rick Probstein, founder of Probstein Auctions, one of the greatest sports collectibles consignment corporations on eBay, left eBay after 20 years to begin his personal public sale platform, “snewscentral.sitee.” The web site shuttered solely a couple of weeks after it launched, citing a series of technical issues, amidst accusations of shill bidding from inside.
Shortly after snewscentral.sitee’s demise, eBay welcomed Probstein again to its platform.
“We’ve obviously had a relationship with Rick for many, many years,” eBay vice chairman and normal supervisor of collectibles Adam Ireland informed The Athletic. “He wanted to go off and do his thing. But part of what I’m always proud about with eBay is that we do have those relationships. So we’d always explicitly said to him that if this thing didn’t work out, there’s always a home for him back on eBay.”
Patrick Ryan, a famous Houston-based sports memorabilia collector, publicly admitted in November 2025 by way of social media to bidding up his personal merchandise in a Fanatics Collect public sale. He consigned the card to a different celebration (Acquir), then positioned a bid on the card by the Fanatics Collect platform. But Ryan denied bidding for the objective of propping up the value of the card.
“I am sorry for bidding carelessly in many auctions,” Ryan mentioned by way of social media. “As a collector, one should be very deliberate in their approach to buying. It’s wrong to not be more careful.”
Claims of shill bidding function a main level inside quite a few arbitration circumstances filed by Whatnot prospects towards the live-selling platform, which additionally embody bigger accusations of conducting an unlawful gambling scheme and violating the RICO Act by permitting sellers to carry randomized box breaks and randomized repack breaks on its platform. As of Monday, 15 arbitration calls for have been filed towards Whatnot.
The Alt shill bidding prevalence comes amidst the firm’s ongoing authorized battle, in which it’s accusing one other market of the similar follow.
In April 2025, Alt filed a lawsuit towards public sale home PWCC, which was acquired by Fanatics (and renamed Fanatics Collect after the timeframe of Alt’s allegations), alleging fraud and breach of auctioneer’s responsibility.
The grievance alleges PWCC carried out a widespread, years-long scheme of shill bidding, utilizing inner and exterior actors to artificially inflate public sale costs for high-value sports playing cards. Alt alleges PWCC retained entry to confidential most bid data to drive up costs and mislead patrons.
Alt is asking for no less than $13.7 million, which is the whole losses the firm estimates it sustained attributable to PWCC’s alleged fraudulent conduct. Alt can be in search of further compensation for punitive damages.
Between 2021 and 2023, Alt mentioned it spent greater than $10.7 million on PWCC’s platform whereas successful 707 auctions and acquiring 809 gadgets. In late 2023, Alt alleged in its lawsuit that it realized that PWCC’s management knew about shill bidding and immediately inspired and allowed different exterior events to put pretend bids on sure auctions, boxing out the genuine bidders and artificially inflating costs.
Alt additionally alleges in the swimsuit that PWCC flagged when excessive web value bidders, resembling Alt, had been collaborating in PWCC auctions, and organized, solicited and inspired shill bids to extend the bidding.
A PWCC/Fanatics spokesperson mentioned that either side had carried out discussions for months earlier than Alt filed the lawsuit, together with an ask for proof of Alt’s claims. The spokesperson mentioned Alt offered none and that is an try at a “payday.”
“Alt has filed a completely baseless lawsuit against PWCC that lacks any substantive evidence,” the spokesperson mentioned. “Even though the accusations they are claiming occurred before PWCC changed ownership in May 2023, we carefully looked into their allegations and found zero evidence to support their claims.”
“Shill bidding has always occurred,” mentioned Ken Goldin, founder and CEO of Goldin Auctions, one of the largest sports card and memorabilia public sale homes in the business. “If you own an auction house and you do proper management and proper software, I would say you either eliminate it or eliminate 99.5 percent of it.”
Goldin mentioned “it’s a pain in the ass” to register for an account at his public sale home, with a number of layers of identification and monetary authentications required.
“Number one is we want to make sure that our consignor actually gets paid,” Goldin mentioned. “Number two, we want to protect our bidders to the point where when you are placing a bid on Goldin.com, you know that you are placing a bid not against a bot, not against somebody who’s trying to bid on their own items, because that is not allowed in our software. And not against somebody’s brother or mother.
“Because guess what? We’ll look at bidding and we see somebody from the same address, somebody from the same IP address. We’ll get an alert and we’ll cut that guy’s bidding off and, in many cases, ban the consignor.”
Goldin isn’t naive, although, realizing that dangerous actors are succesful of discovering avenues to conduct shill bidding regardless of guardrails.
“I can’t let you know that in any public sale in the world that one collector gained’t say to a different, ‘Hey, can you help me out and put a couple bids in this item? … Nobody can ever stop that,” Goldin said.
The Athletic contacted other prominent collectibles auction houses and marketplaces about how they combat shill bidding.
eBay, the largest of them all, said, “eBay has zero tolerance for shill bidding and uses a combination of technology and expert review to proactively monitor our marketplace, strengthen safeguards, and uphold a fair and transparent experience for our global community of buyers and sellers.”
They did not expand on what those uses of technology and expert review entail.
Fanatics Collect said it “has rigorous, industry-leading standards and we operate under strict published guidelines: no house bidding, no seller bidding on their own items, no hidden reserves, and no seller guarantees. Together, these rules exist for one reason: to ensure a fair, transparent marketplace that protects collectors and preserves the integrity of every auction.”
They did not explain how those guidelines are enforced.
Heritage Auctions said neither it nor its employees “participate in any form of shill bidding and we work to prevent it from occurring in our auctions. Heritage Auctions software specifically prohibits clients from placing bids on their consigned material with their account.”
The Alt shill bidding incident with the Vinatieri card consignor first came to light via YouTube and social media posts from Nick Andrews, known online as “Boston Card Hunter.” Andrews has posted numerous videos about the topic over the past few months, after the consignor said he commented about his issues with Alt during a live stream that Andrews hosted. Andrews’ LinkedIn web page beforehand famous that he labored with Fanatics as a guide.
“It is also a fact that the account that publicized a single screenshot from this exchange was run by a former Fanatics employee, the same competitor we are currently suing for over $13 million in shill bidding damages,” Alt mentioned in a assertion.
Andrews responded with a assertion to The Athletic: “I am not, nor have I ever been, an employee of Fanatics. Alt is attempting to deflect attention from allegations of fraudulent shill bidding.”
The consignor mentioned he was conscious of Andrews’ attainable ties to Fanatics, however mentioned he didn’t find out about the authorized battle between Alt and PWCC/Fanatics till informed by The Athletic throughout an interview.
Regardless of what the consignor knew when he spoke to Andrews, his textual content messages with the Alt consultant point out that a present Alt worker didn’t discourage a buyer from committing shill bidding.
“It’s hard, but not impossible to police on a massive scale of people doing this type of stuff,” the consignor mentioned. “But if you’re going to use a part of your company to go after another company for doing something, but then your company does that same thing too, and they get caught, it kind of adds to why this industry can be so gross sometimes.”