This is not about stupid, I do not think that. I knew you were talking out your rear end and I tried to correct you because many other people read this stuff and it was not fair for you to mislead them just because you sounded correct. Here goes, I admit it seems tricky, and at first all of the ebay nonsense is. With two equal ending bids, like $6000 in this case, the earlier submitted bid wins. ebay does not display the actual proxy amount bid by the high bidder, that is why I said it could be really any amount over $6000 in this case. If the winning bidder, the guy with (0) feedback, had say a maximum proxy bid of $7000 and the 2nd place guy had bid again or a few times and gone up to $7000 and stopped, like he did at $6000, the (0) feedback guy would still win because he had made the high proxy bid earlier. If the 2nd place guy had gone again to say $9000, he would have won at $7100 unless the (0) guy bid over the $9000 to say $9100. It really depends on who makes the last bid. If this is not clear, please ask me to clarify and I will try. I told you it was tricky.

I do not bid on any item I want until the last 20 seconds or so and at that point I bid the maximum I am willing to pay for the item. I base my bid on bids placed up to that point and the sequence of those bids to try to see a pattern and get a guess at the high proxy bid. If I bid high enough, I will only pay a little over the last highest proxy bid, not my maximum bid which is never displayed. It can get a little more complicated when you are bidding against people who are doing the same thing, but I have techniques to counter most last second bids. Peace.