Ebay question
 

Why do bidders place multiple bids on the same item that are seconds apart? Am I missing something? The item still goes to the highest bidder no matter how many bids you placed. Thanks for enlightening me!

They were probably increasing their proxy bid.

Obviously I could never "prove" this theory but I think it's to intimidate prospective bidders: i.e. wow this auction has 23 bids already, I'll probably never win.

As an ebay guy what you are seeing is you can preset your limit that your willing to bid up to and ebay automatically increases it in the lowest increments possible to either increase your bid...did that make sence?

What about when items have only reached the opening bid amount but have like 20 bids from the same bidder? eBay wouldn't be doing that automatically.

This is what I am talking about. I see it all the time.

The person is upping their bid 20 different times. Probably like the other poster said, trying to scare others off because some might see all the bids and think they have no chance.

I've NEVER heard of ebay shill/bidding people up.

No with all the possible downside to shill bidding I could never see Ebay doing that. They make too much money as is

Easy answer why it's more and more common is the somewhat new Ebay One-Click bid.

It's like a slot machine button. Automatically goes up to the next highest bid, without having to input any numbers, and very little time goes by between bids.

Sorry that I've never seen ebay raise my own bid without there being another bidder. You don't think people would notice that.