Posted By:
Hal LewisDavid, I was wondering the same thing ... and I think there are several reasons (psychologically) for doing it.
One, obviously it peaks someone's interest in an auction when they are the "leader" for a particular item at a great price ... even if the lead is short-lived. They become emotionally attached to the item during that time period ... and then fight for the right to own it later.
Second, the way these auctions work is that the ONLY people who can BID on an item after the auction expires are the people who have ALREADY bid on it. Therefore, it benefits Mastro to have 22 people bid on an item rather than just 4 ... because that means that there will be MORE people at the end who can fight for the right to own every item.
Third, and related to #2, allowing people to bid very LOW amounts allows people to place a LOT of LOW BIDS on a lot of items. Thus ... if they LOSE OUT on one item at the very end of the auction ... they are STILL ALIVE on every other item on which they bid. This benefits Mastro MUCH MORE than having someone with all their eggs in one basket.
In other words ... if I have $50,000 to spend and I have to bid it ALL on the Honus Wagner T206 card JUST TO START the bidding ... then I would NOT be able to place any other bids until I have LOST this auction for sure. Well...if I was the "leader" for Honus until after the deadline and THEN got outbid ... I would have $50,000 to spend and NO WAY to bid on anything else!!
SO ... my strategy is to bid $100,000 on ALL of the high dollar items and then force everyone else to spend ALL of their money on these items so that I can get all of the little things I want! 
(just kidding, of course!)