There should be no comparison to the Mastro shill bidding. While the intent there was also to raise the price, bidding was done with knowledge of the high bid amount. So let's toss that thought aside.
As far as bidding some amount to raise the price, with no knowledge of the high bid, without intending to win, but paying if you do win, no retractions allowed........ I don't even think it is immoral or unethical.
But, if your intention is to "protect your investment", then it also won't work. If prices of "your card" that you are trying to protect have gone up, you won't have bid enough and it doesn't matter since it is up. If it has gone down, all you will do it buy another card at a price higher than anyone else which means that if you were to sell it immediately you will lose money.
On a similar note, I was in a situation several years ago where I was bidding strong on cards from 4-5 different 1880's non-sports sets. I was consistently losing to the same collector - someone with loads of cash. It got to the point where I knew that if I bid $50, he would win it for $51. But if I didn't bid he would win it for $20. I wouldn't bid for a week, see how low they went for, think they went low and try again to win a few but then lose anyway. Frustrating. Wrote about it on the Net54 Non-Sports Card Forum. Someone finally responded that I controlled the market for these sets. Interesting thought.
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