Originally Posted by Blue Order
Well, I had no intention of bidding on that bike anyway, I was just watching. But that's not all a shill can do to be successful. A shill can in essence allow the seller to keep from selling a bike at a low price, by making the "winning" bid.
That's true, but a seller can avoid a low price sale using a reserve price.
I really think the auction you observed was normal and appropriate. Fresnomayo wanted the bike and he wanted it cheap, so he waited to late in the auction, and then he bid $11 with a $25 maximum. An inknown bidder then made repeated attempts to bid a little over his price and ebay reponded by bumping fresnomayo's bid stepwise to $25. Meanwhile, Fresnomayo sees this going on and gets scared he might lose his first auction, so he submits a new maximum of $50, preventing lvgolden from outbidding him.
The only thing that is a little unclear (to me) is why some of the bid times, like ajtcufrog's, seem to be out of chronological order, but that's probably just some glitch in how ebay displays bid times.