[phisigduchesscv]

HI All,

Regarding the suggestion to start a group to buy up badges on e-bay that is pretty much a guaranteed way to start seeing our badges appear on e-bay and end up at high prices. I don't recall who or where i heard this from but I seem to remember some national personnel saying that Phi Sig didn't want to start a "rescue" group for just that reason.

Here's a possible scenario - I'm a badge collector/seller. I post a badge on ebay and see that there's a couple people bidding on it (probably rescuers). The price keeps going up, all the better for the seller, since neither of the two bidders has contacted the other to see if they are members of that particular org. Regarding no contact, this happened to me, I bid on some historical memorabila wanting to give it to CO - I emailed someone who was bidding against me to see if she was a Phi Sig. I never received a response back despite a couple of emails. There wasnt anything in her profile about Phi Sig. So I kept bidding on the items until it got to the point where I couldn't afford it and let the other person win, praying it was a sister. Turns out it was a sister who donated the items to CO. If she had only responded to my email, I would have stopped bidding and she couldn't have gotten the stuff for about $25-30 then in the $100's.

Anyway, back to the ebay seller selling the badge. He starts to notice how the bids are starting to go higher as rescuers try to buy the badge. He does something unethical but hard to prove - he talks a buddy in to signing on to ebay with a profile of badge collector and bidding on the item. Now as soon as a sisters sees badge collector they're more then likely going to bid more money. So the seller's friend bids higher to drive the bid up. The seller is going to win either way - he's going to realize there is a max that the sister is willing to pay and tell his friend to stop bidding. He got a higher price for the item then he would have originally got. Or if the friend was to win the seller can do one of two things - claim the person didn't pay for the item and offer it to the last honest bidder at the price bid or list it again (possibly under a different name) and have his friend push the bids up again - this time he knows the price to stop bidding at so the rescuer gets the badge. Again inflated pricing - as other collectors start to see how much the badges are going for they'll start searching the pawn shops, estate sales, etc trying to find the badges just to post.

Sorry for the long post. There was a thread in Chit Chat or Greek Life about ebay and rescuers. You might want to read through some of the threads to see what badge rescuers and others have to say.

Carolyn