Posted By:
dstudebaI think you answered your own question in your very first post.
You said that you don't want to point to the item because you know someone else would outbid you. From this statement you are going to get it below market value, and if you needed to sell it, you could just advertise it better than the current seller has.
That being said, if one other person has the same idea, you could overpay.
An example. I found an auction labeled "1913 Baltimore Schedule" if I recall correctly. It had a baseball player on the front, and I knew I had seen it, but couldn't find it anywhere. I debated between putting a monster snipe on it and talking to someone else about it. I finally broke down and asked Zach who identified it as an 'actors series' so the player wasn't an actual player. Since Zach was more interested in it than I, I decided not to bid. JC ended up winning the auction and came on the board asking what issue it was. So JC had found the auction and had the same idea I did.
You can imagine what would have happened if my 'monster' bid had actually topped JC's 'top all bid'.