Watch out for these "scams" v2

[JayTuut]

So basically a bit ago I got this trade offer

 

 

 

They had buyers at around $5.15, and so I accepted and he added me and I basically said if I sell them i'll give him the keys.

 

I put them up for $7 or something to see if i could make some profit

 

no biters.

 

I put it up for the TWENTY people buying it $5.15, i bought the 3 up for $5.15. Suddenly ALL the buy orders disappeared.

 

There were still buy orders at $3, so someone put one up for 2.90 and then all the $3 buy orders dissapeared.

 

It seems to be a scam with fake buy orders, that show up but if one is actually put there, they remove the buy order.

 

Some people were silly enough to buy them, but it was sus at the time I got the trade offer as I saw they only went for 0.03

 

 

But some people still didn't check and ended up buying them for a lot

 

 

(Just above buy orders so people thought it was a good deal)

 

 

So I just thought this was very interesting that all the buy orders were instantly removed when someone put it at the buyer order or lower. So just watch out

 

Item in question:

https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/270450/Headshot

 

Now the sellers are down to 0.17 ... rip the people who bought high.

[RED265]

This is considered price manipulation

[Beaser]

Here is a better way!

 

1)Accept the trade

2) Block the person

3) Profit!

[JayTuut]

1 hour ago, Beaser said:

Here is a better way!

 

1)Accept the trade

2) Block the person

3) Profit!

 

Wow i earned a whole 9 cents! :D:D:D:D:D

[Jason Le]

4 hours ago, ḎℰѦÐ! Boom said:

So I just thought this was very interesting that all the buy orders were instantly removed when someone put it at the buyer order or lower. So just watch out

 

Whenever you place a buy order for an item and spend all your money, the buy order is still up.

For example you have $100 and create 20 buy oders for $5 each(like in this case) and spend the money for any other items/games, the buy orders will be up untill someone is trying to sell it for $5 or less.

 

I don't know if this is intentionally or just a bug but It's been there for many many years.

[Diamond jozu]

why even take an item that you dont trade with?

[3.50]

I'm not sure why they sent the items for free like that, instead of including your keys in the initial trade...? 

This seems like a weirdly complicated version of the basic SCM manipulation scam, which goes like this:

 

1) Find a very cheap and not-so-common item and buy all the copies on the market.  Buy any more as they get put up, but choose something that won't have a steady supply.  (If you want to make it look good, you sell a few of them to your alt account at the price you want people to believe they're worth.  You lose 13%, but you stand to make a lot more than that.)

2) Once the ones you bought are tradable, create some buy orders (let's say at $8) and then immediately spend your wallet funds on something else so the buy orders can't be filled. 

3) Send trade offers to people at 2 keys per item saying "this item has SCM buy orders at $8, I'll give them to you for two keys each because I need tradable keys now, and you can keep the change"

4) They accept the trade.  You get the keys. They try to sell the items, but the buy orders you created don't go through because you spent the funds already.  At this point they realize they've been scammed.

 

That's why you always check the price history on any SCM item.

 

It's also why it might be a good idea if buy orders were removed if your wallet balance went below that amount.

The reason it doesn't do that already is (presumably) so that you can load more money into your wallet and continue buying without having to re-do all your buy orders...that would really suck, and no one who has a lot of buy orders wants that to happen. 

 

However, I think it would be reasonable to run a check every time you spend wallet funds, in order to see if your new wallet balance is too low to fulfill any of your buy orders--and if so, to temporarily deactivate them until your wallet balance was high enough.