You're right Oldhack ... most vendors ebay auctions are rigged ... What you look for is people with high bid activity with the seller ... I have a 697 feedback score 100.0% positive for the past 6 years and have never given or received a negative or even a neutral ... but I snipe my bids in the last 15 to 2 seconds ...
Whenever I place bids with sellers , my bid activity with the seller is around 5% or less ... when you see wankers with 50% or higher bid activity with a seller ... you are seeing a scammer (shill bidder) ... regardless of their feedback score or percentage ... it's the BID ACTIVITY with any particular seller that you look for ... Then you watch for feedback to be given and received to verify if the buyer was genuine or a shill bidder ... Aside from that whenever the end prices of items are consistently close ... you know for 100% positive that you're seeing bulls~hit in action ...
I've followed hundreds of auctions over the past 6 years and seen the pattern ...
I'm also positive there are wankers who "sport bid" just to make others pay more ...
You're best to bid on auctions when you know most buyers will either be out pissing up OR are broke after blowing their cash over the weekend and are too tired to sit at a computer concentrating on pushing the price up ... Don't even put the listings in your my ebay watch list because that lets the sellers know someone is going to have a stab at their item in the last seconds ... so they'll put in a counter snipe just in case somebody bids ... Instead , book mark the listing and go to it to bid 10 to 15 seconds out ... that way you'll "snowball" the seller and his scumbag shill bidder mates ... They won't even know where the fook you came from ...
I've picked up quite a few bargains that way ... One of the cheapest was a new Lifan 140 for $182 + $30 postage off DHZ ... I also won another one for $210 that way ... I won a Keihin PE-28 carb kit with cable , manifold , rubber adaptor and Uni Filter for $50 AUD ... plus shirt loads of other stuff ...
You have to out smart the shill bidders by not putting auctions in your ebay watch list and most importantly ... by not placing a bid until the last few seconds when it's too late for others to see your bid then respond to it ... You WILL cop other snipers who are using the same tactics as you are ... but at least you'll know the price you won the item for was fair and square since nobody else knew you even existed ...
