Just this week, eBay dropped a bombshell on the NBA card industry by accusing PWCC of shill bidding. The eCommerce giant also deactivated around 17,000 items listed by the Oregon-based company on their platform, to the surprise of many. Turns out, there's really more than meets the eye when it comes to eBay's decision to suspend PWCC. This brings us to PWCC owner Brent Huigens (in a second).
The person mentioned here who was asked to shill bid was part of a group who allegedly even won their own auctions for the purpose of creating higher data points because they owned higher graded cards.
I was investigating the operation when this person suddenly passed away. https://t.co/dLuuHr925I
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) August 18, 2021
Darren Rovell shared a post on Twitter detailing a Sports Card Radio report released last 2016 that alleges PWCC Marketplace CEO Brent Huigens instructed his client to place a bid on one of the company's items posted on eBay. The said card is an SGC-graded slab containing a 1936 Goudey World Wide Gum Joe DiMaggio card.
In the article, a certain Courtney DeLorme said that he won't go over $10 million after bidding in $1,000 increments. Huigens allegedly replied that the bid will go higher and instructed DeLorme to continue bidding.
That detail would have been enough for any company to cut ties with PWCC. The thing is, this rabbit hole is deeper than what most people think. The article said that DeLorme claimed he was the owner of the DiMaggio slabbed card before Brent Huigens purchased it from him. He then accused the PWCC head honcho of cracking the SGC 50 slab, doctoring the card, and submitting it to PSA, where it would attain a grade of 7.
For their part in this NBA card debacle, PWCC said that they only engaged with PSA to verify the card's grade. Betsy Huigens, Co-Owner and Director of Client Services, added that they were not doing business with DeLorme at that time and blocked him from their operations.
This is just one incident linking PWCC to an anomalous activity when it comes to their listed card products. eBay must have taken this case into account, including other potential incidents they must have stumbled upon during their respective investigation. In any case, things may need to get worse before it gets better for both eBay and PWCC.
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