I'm presently in a bidding war on a magic auction site. I eventually, stop bidding, for I got suspicious of the other bidder keeps bidding against himself.
I wonder if it could be the same person who puts the item up for auction is driving the price up. Also it's a private bidder.
Just my thinking---I would like some feed back.
Ricky

What you are describing is called "shill bidding", it is against ebay's rules, and is also
usually illegal in the united states.

Some folks still do it though, usually smaller sellers.

It could also be that the original bidder placed a much higher bid than you and the system is automatically beating your bid each time by the minimal bid needed. It looks like he's bidding against you but it is just the system raising his bid to the minimum needed to be again the top bidder based on his higher original bid. Not sure if that makes sense so here's an example.

Lets say the opening bid for an item is $1.00 and succeeding bids must be at least a dollar more. If bidder A bids $100 dollars, the auction site is going to list his bid as $1.00. You enter the auction with a $5.00 bid. The system will automatically bump his bid up to $6.00 since his original high bid was a hundred. The system will do this every time you bid unless you actually beat his original bid of $100 so it will appear that someone is bumping up the price constantly.

Or as Fedora says it could be a shill bidder who is bumping up the price for the seller. If you lose the auction but get a notice from the seller saying the original winner dropped out then that would indicate that shill bidding may have occurred.

What are the best auction sites particularly for magic items?