Ummm, yeah. It's an auction. The highest bid wins.
Say an auction starts at $10.
If you bid $20, the bidding opens to you at $10.
If I bid $15,the bidding stays with you but now is $16.
If I bid more agressively at $18, the bidding still with you goes to $19.
All of this can take place in the last few seconds of an auction.
There is such a thing as shill bidding, and since eBay introduced masked bidders (like f***f) it is harder to spot them. Two giveaways:
Bidders who outbid the high bidder and then retract their bids without bidding again. This allows the seller and the shill to see what the maximum bid of the honest bidder is.
Bidders who bid almost only with one seller, but never never win. Shills do not want to win, they want you to win at as high a price as possible.
The guy who isn't a shill is the guy who constantly beats you. He just has deeper pockets and is willing to pay more than you. Actually if he is constantly bidding against you, and you never win, he might be reporting you as a possible shill bidder.
