problem is shilling, or pumping, or defending, or whatever your favorite euphemism is, is pretty impossible to stop, especially with a third party consignor. I mean I had a buddy consign some pretty high end stuff recently to a well-known seller, what (other than the risk of me winning, or my personal ethical code) is to stop me, as a seemingly unrelated third party, from bidding his items up. This really is the case with any auction, I'd love to say that a live auction is exempt from this phenomena, but unless all the involved parties are known to the auctioneer, it's just not possible to stop it.
In your case, I definitely smell a rat as the history was there just waiting to be exploited.
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