In an unrelated note, did you see this item on eBay? It's supposedly a bottle of Gatorade that Tiger Woods consumed before his first round of play in the 2007 PGA Championship at Southern Hills. You can pick it up for a mere $38,000 buy it now or execute a best offer. It arrives with a letter from the person who secured it and may actually have Tiger DNA on it. I don't know if it's real and have no idea what it may eventually sell for, but it's something you don't see every day, even on eBay.

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If you’ve used eBay long enough, you’ve seen blatant examples of shill bidding and many more examples that you suspect of it. I stumbled across one example recently when looking for golf items. I collect Tiger-related items and was thrilled to see 1995 U.S. Amateur Badge listed in someone’s store. As you may know, the 1995 stuff is extremely rare. Unfortunately, it was listed for $3,500 buy it now or best offer and, as expected, nobody purchased it.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed the same badge was listed in a regular auction; this was my chance to get it for a reasonable price. The user IDs were kept private in the auction, which is always a major red flag, but I continued to watch it. It sold for $1,700, but the bidding history looked very suspicious. First, there was a bid of $990. You don’t bid $990 to win an item; it’s a shill-type bid. You bid $1,006 or something like that so if someone bids $1,000, you are still the high bidder. Second, there were no bids between $990 and $1,500 and two bids of $1,500. You be the judge.

I mentioned this auction to a co-worked and told him my suspicions when the bidding was at $1,500. I said, “This looks like a shill auction. My guess is that we’ll see this item again in a few months from the same seller.” I was wrong, it only took a couple days for him/her to relist it at $2,000, which seems like a good deal since the last one sold for $2,000. Sure, he might have two of them or maybe the winning bidder didn’t pay, but it looks pretty bad.