I seen it and I can tell you exactly what happened.
Bots.
eBay is full of bots.
Nobody backed out. eBay refuses to do anything about the bots because it gives their site more traffic and makes them more money. The higher things sell for the more eBay gets on their final vale fee, so of course they love bots.
When selling on eBay in the form of an auction and an item gets bid on you are automatically entering yourself into a little game. A game of 3 people. Both you bidding on the item and the seller selling the item are the victims in this scenario.
1 - Bots. Their goal is to keep outbidding any bid. It is a computer on a fake account so it will never pay. It's programmed to bid. It reacts with a counter-bid within seconds of you bidding.
2 - Revenge bidders. Their goal is to keep countering your bids and make the auction cost as much to you as it possibly can. They do not want the item at all. They do not care about the value. They want you to hurt and cry for your item because it makes them feel good that you are losing so much money. If you stop bidding, so do they. If they win it, they refuse to pay for it. They will also be on burner accounts so they can make a new account if they get banned off eBay. If the item gets relisted, the game starts again until the seller blocks them or gives up selling it. Then the revenge bidders win.
3 - Real bidders. Just your average run of the mill human bidders that may or may not want the item but they will bid honestly. You are at the mercy of their perceived value of something.
The seller did not restrict bidding to only allow people over 50 feedback or whatever limit it is, so the bots went wild on his listing. At the time I seen it the username winning was just all 0000's and it had 0 feedback and it was bidding in $100 increments.
