Well this is just silly.

[walter23]

Maybe it's european buyers taking advantage of potentially duty-free shipping, what with the rock bottom US dollar and all?

[Brian Ellis]

I don't understand the bidding process for this item. The winning bidder submitted 5 bids at intervals of about 30 seconds and in increments of $100, all in the last couple minutes of the auction, without any intervening bids. IOW, he went from $1600 to $2000 for no apparent reason. I understand how ebay's proxy bidding works but there shouldn't have been any reason for the proxy system to increase the bid from $1600 to $2000 without anyone else bidding, should there? Is there some strategy behind this method of bidding or does it perhaps indicate something suspicious going on or was the buyer maybe just getting nervous that he wouldn't win and so kept increasing his maximum bid?

[domenico Foschi]

I don't understand the bidding process for this item. The winning bidder submitted 5 bids at intervals of about 30 seconds and in increments of $100, all in the last couple minutes of the auction, without any intervening bids. IOW, he went from $1600 to $2000 for no apparent reason. I understand how ebay's proxy bidding works but there shouldn't have been any reason for the proxy system to increase the bid from $1600 to $2000 without anyone else bidding, should there? Is there some strategy behind this method of bidding or does it perhaps indicate something suspicious going on or was the buyer maybe just getting nervous that he wouldn't win and so kept increasing his maximum bid?

I sometime do that to discourage my fellow bidders, but 6 bids sounds a little too much.
Could it be that the seller was manipulating the auction?
Who knows...

[domenico Foschi]

If you notice the user names of the bidders, they looks similar, and they look to be fairly new to ebay, with numbers of 2-3-4.
I have seen quite a few of these user names on ebay lately in the Phographic gear department and I wonder if they are in fact all connected.
It sure start smelling like a scam to me.

[Dave Parker]

Actually,

It looks like an inexperienced bidder up against a couple of shills...

Dave

[Patrik Roseen]

I agree there are some really strange pricing lately on ebay. In this particular case there might have been a Reserve not met until USD 2000 and this person really wanted it...

[Mike Castles]

Patrik, you got it..just looked and there was a reserve on this item. Still, agree it 'looks' funny but in the end I think the person that won the bid was just searching for the reserve price and found it before the auction ended.

[c.d.ewen]

It looks funny, but makes perfect sense. The winner kept upping his bids, trying to beat an earlier bidder's identical bid - look at the dates. The winner then entered a bid high enough to satisfy the reserve price.

I've wondered about those X***X ids for a while. I guess they're legitimate, as many of them have valid feedback. They do seem to drive up prices, though.

Charley

[Bob Jones]

I've wondered about those X***X ids for a while. I guess they're legitimate, as many of them have valid feedback. They do seem to drive up prices, though.

Charley

Those id's are legit and are generated by eBay. This is a quote from eBay's bidding information:

"eBay limits how your bid history information is displayed by using anonymous names. When the highest bid, reserve or Buy It Now price on an item reaches or exceeds a certain level, other members cannot view your member-specific information—such as your User ID—on the Bid History page. Your complete User ID is shown to the seller of this item only. Bidders are assigned anonymous names, such as a***b. These anonymous names are used consistently across all auctions that exceed a certain level."

[walter23]

Those are just ebay generated IDs to hide the identity of other bidders. The idea is to try to subvert fraudulent "second chance" offers that people sometimes send out to people who did not win an item but came close.

If you notice the user names of the bidders, they looks similar, and they look to be fairly new to ebay, with numbers of 2-3-4.
I have seen quite a few of these user names on ebay lately in the Phographic gear department and I wonder if they are in fact all connected.
It sure start smelling like a scam to me.