The notion that early bidding drives the final price higher has no logical basis, and does not prove out in practice. I attended a negotiation seminar a few months ago where they presented information collected from studying several thousand online auctions, and could find no statistical evidence that the final price is affected by when the bids are placed. Early bidding just had a tendency to suppress the last-minute flurries or the increments in the amounts of late bids.

One interesting event at this seminar (which otherwise had nothing to do with ebay) had the presenter auctioning off a $20 bill to the audience. With bidding in 50-cent increments, it went for $22.50. The presenter said he's been doing this at every stop for the past several years, and only twice has the bidding stopped at $20. In almost every crowd, there are two or three people who place a value on winning.