Aw contraire, Pete. All your premises are based on EVERYONE playing a certain way. When I understand how everyone else plays, I can adjust my play to give me the advantage. If everyone simply picked a max up front, bid it, and stuck to it, prices for a lot of chips would definitely be lower. Sometimes one person's perception of value is affected by another person's expression of interest. If nobody wants it, why would I? If everybody wants it, it must be worth more than I thought it was. That, my friend, is just plain human nature. You're free to deny it. You can't change it. As Archie said, eBay could completely change the rules and make it much more like an actual honest-to-goodness auction by extending the auction until it's received no bids for a period of time, say 5 minutes. Until they do, the best play is a good end game.