How does a bid for £191 appear to be made on the 27th without actually appearing in the bidding history until the end of the auction?
1. EBay uses a proxy bidding system where you put in your maximum amount and it only uses as much of that bid as it needs to in order for that bid to remain at the top.
2. The leading bid at any time is the maximum bid of the
second highest bidder plus an amount called the
bid increment - up to the amount of the highest bidder's maximum.
3. Where two (or more) bidders have placed the same amount as their maximum, the one who placed theirs first will be in the lead.
4. For each bid manually entered by a buyer,
one entry is added to the bidding history. It has a timestamp of when that bid was made and the
current amount of that bid. When another bidder places a bid, that single entry gets
updated, so the previous value is no longer visible. If you were to have taken note of the bidding during the auction, you would see this change. (I believe there is an option to view the proxy bidding in detail, but this is of little use when assessing the current state of bidding for a buyer interested in placing a bid - but it will clarify what happened along the way.)
On eBay it is possible for people to bid identical amounts simultaneously (and with sniping this probably happens as often as not), so they tie break on who started bidding first out of the tied bidders.
I did not know that. You learn something every day!
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