Am I Being A Sore Loser Or Just A Coincidence

AS if I did not already have enough stamps for the next 10 years I have been bidding on some collections on eBay. Which I did not win. So I went looking at the available bio on the winner. It turns out they outbid me on at least two, that I have found so far, of the lots I was bidding on. (Coincidence?) It then turns out that 99% of this bidders activity is with a single major NY Auction house. This sounds to me like maybe the bidding was not high enough so up it was going up until a satisfactory number was met?? The deals were really incredibly good on these two lots and this bidder did out bid my max by only the next bid up. Anyone else have similar coincidences?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Wait and see if the collections come up for auction again soon.

Also if the deal was good and you lost by one increment then you may have bid too low. If you are second highest bidder you will always lose by one increment.

Do you snipe or do you bid early and often and contribute to the price runup?

how do you know they only "out bid my max by only the next bid up" - eBay lots always sell for no more than one increment over the second high bid

Can you inc a link to another of the sellers items so we can have a look at what he is selling? Sometimes the feedback is a key indicater if any shill bidding is going on. And any current bidding can be looked at. Try bidding low on another couple of his items and see if your outbid by the same bidder.

I had an even more bizarre auction. I was outbid and had decided not to increase my bid. A day or so later I get an e-mail from eBay saying the high bidder had retracted his bid and that I was now the high bidder. When I looked at the bid history the retracted bidder within 1 minute of retracting placed another bid slightly lower than mine. ???? Smelled a little fishy.

When I investigated that bidders activity, 84% of his bids were with this seller. Smelled even more fishy ! I contacted the seller to see what was going on. No reply. I waited until 13 hours before the close and retracted my bid. Maybe I've done that once is over ten years of bidding. The lot sold for 99 cents.

The whole event seemed to be a case of shill bidding. Further investigation of current and past sales by the seller changed my mind. I couldn't see a pattern and that bidder only had 1 retraction on his record. Most likely the bidder had made an honest mistake. The 84 % was most likely, he just liked what this seller was offering and wanted to combine shipments.

Sometimes we are too quick to judge.

Well, with 99 Cents your're probably right, that it's been a mistake. I once had my limit - but not for a stamp auction - on 5000,- Euros.
Day by day one bidder got higher and higher, until he reached my limit. One hour later I got an email from eBay, that I'm very lucky to have the highest bid again - 4995,-

First I was really angry about that, but there was no need to. If you get the highest bid this way, you cannot be forced to take the item. Your bid expires immediately, when someone makes a higher offer. So a short "I'm not interested anymore"-message, and that's it.

There are all kinds of games being played by both the seller and the buyers during public auctions ,my experience has been at public auctions but the same would apply to on line auctions .
Some times you get so mad because you know your getting jerked around and want to punch someone out . I even had friends run up bidding against me only because I won a lot earlier in the day that they also wanted. Suck it up and walk away and the sooner you forget about it ,the happier you are .