Reserve's are fine. But shills in an auction which by its rules prohibits shills are not OK. Although you may say that If you bid the maximum you are willing to pay, it makes no difference if there was a shill I disagree for two reasons.

First: When I make a bid on Ebay I am saying that I am willing to pay $x provided there is someone else who wants it for $x-(one increment). The fact that I would have been willing to pay more is irrelevent. If I decide I want to buy a new widget and I'm willing to pay $10 for it. If I go to K-Mart and they have the widget on sale for $5, should I fork over an extra $5 to the store because I felt the widget was $10. Of course if the auction permits shills then I have no problem with it although I believe the shill should be disclosed.

Second: To some degree people consciously or unconsciously will use auction bids as a basis to judge value and thus effect their decision about how much they are willing to bid on this or the next auction. If you see a chip you like and note that in auctions it is routinely getting bids in the range of $40 that will effect your decision about how much to bid. You may still decide not to buy it for that price, but on the other hand you may feel that its value is $40 because there is apparently a market for the chip in that price range. If in fact the bids are not genuine bids of people who are willing to pay that price the shills have the effect of driving up the perception of demand.