How QuickComps Brings Real Transparency to Live Auctions in the Post-Shill-Bidding Era

I've been in the hobby for over 20 years. I've bought, sold, traded, ripped, broken, and watched more auctions than I can count. And I've felt the shift firsthand over the past few years.

The sports card hobby took some heavy hits in 2025. High-profile shill bidding scandals at Fanatics Collect and Snype Auctions left collectors questioning every bid, every price, and every "hot" lot. Patrick Ryan's $20K self-bid on a Michael Jordan sticker, the "Hunny Bunny" account firing off thousands of bids before Snype collapsed — these stories spread fast and damaged trust across the board. Those of us in the hobby felt the chill, and the conversations at shows, breaks, and group chats shifted toward one question: how do we know what's real?

But honestly, shill bidding wasn't the only thing that pushed me to build QuickComps. It was overpaying. Like a lot of collectors, I've gotten caught up in the energy of a live stream, knew I didn't have time to pull comps, made a gut call, and ended up severely overpaying. The moment you have time to pull the actual comp and see the reality of what happened... it stings. That sting kept happening. And every time it did, I'd think the same thing: if I just had real comps in front of me, none of this would have happened.

So I built it. QuickComps started as a tool I made for myself, to keep me honest during live auctions. Then friends started asking for access. Then their friends. And here we are.

The core problem: you can't trust the price you see in the moment

Shill bidding works because auctions move fast. In live streams on Whatnot, eBay Live, or Fanatics Live, it's easy for artificial bids to inflate perceived value before most buyers can react. Even on traditional platforms, suspicious sales distort the comps everyone relies on.

The industry is responding with AI monitoring, stricter verification, and provenance tracking — all positive steps. But collectors still need immediate, actionable intelligence while they're actually bidding. That's where QuickComps comes in.

How QuickComps helps you bid smarter

• Instant slab scanning from any live stream — QuickComps captures the slab visible on your screen — Whatnot, eBay Live, or Fanatics Live — and uses AI to extract the year, set, player, parallel, grade, and card number in seconds. No typing during the chaos of live bidding. Just click "Scan Slab," click "Pull Comps," and decide.
• Real-time bid banners during live auctions — While the auctioneer is hyping the next bid, QuickComps shows you a clear banner indicating whether the current price is above or below recent market value. No more guessing. No more FOMO driving you to overpay because the room feels "hot." (This one is personal for me. Too many times I've been the guy bidding with adrenaline. This is the tool I wish I'd had two years ago.)
• Outlier detection on sold comps — Our system surfaces flags on suspicious sales: Best Offer transactions, condition outliers, and prices that fall well outside historical ranges. We're actively building deeper anomaly detection as we collect more data. The goal: make it easy to spot lots where the headline price doesn't reflect what most collectors actually pay.
• Aggregated marketplace data — We pull from eBay solds, Goldin, PWCC, Fanatics, MySlabs, SportsCardsPro, and more. By aggregating across sources rather than relying on any single one, you see a truer picture of the market.

Transparency isn't just platforms' responsibility — it's ours too

The push for hobby transparency in 2026 is real: more AI detection, better provenance tracking, stronger rules against bid manipulation. QuickComps complements those efforts by putting power directly in collectors' hands.

Instead of hoping the platform catches everything, you have an independent tool that levels the playing field in real time. Whether you're a seasoned bidder protecting your budget or a newer collector trying not to get burned, knowing true comps is one of the most practical forms of transparency available today. Tools that put reliable data in collectors' hands are part of that shift — and that's what we're trying to build.

Join the closed beta

We're still in invite-only beta — free, no credit card required — and actively improving based on collector feedback. If you're tired of second-guessing prices during live auctions, or wondering whether that last-second bid war was even real, give QuickComps a try.

Join the closed beta at quickcomps.io and get real comps the moment a card hits the screen.

The hobby is moving toward greater trust and fairness. I'm just one collector trying to make that happen a little faster.

— Nick (@realsunsfancards), Founder of QuickComps