Seller Tactics.....

I've noticed that behaviour more than once.
Mostly if you don't win on such auctions the item will be listed again in a few days, lol.

Cheap tactic. Starting with 1 Dollar, Pound or Euro and then start increasing the price instead of enlisting the item with a higher price where they would have to pay a higher enlist-fee.

Of course, the practice you describe is very much against eBay rules, and you gotta think that eBay is watching at least those sellers who have complaints made against 'em. Other sellers, as well as buyers, can complain if they notice that sort of thing going on. I've even been contacted privately by sellers who warn me against buying from somebody for that or similar reasons.

There's always the possibility that the bidders are really newbies. Even with the sunglasses (people often decide they don't like the first nick they pick and change it.)

I watched a week or so ago as a person with 0 feedback came into the "search field" that I cruise for most of my bidding and proceeded for a week to bid virtually everything available up to skyhigh prices from a multitude of different sellers (we are talking bids of $175 on items that are worth maybe $5-15 at most on a normal ebay day), won all those auctions and then suddenly stopped bidding.

I interpret this as a person who rushed into ebay, saw a lot of items they thought were WAY COOL, bid like a naive maniac against some serious collectors, then suddenly stopped and said, WHOA, this is real, I gotta pay for this stuff!

I will be interested to see if they do. So far they have got 1 positive feedback.

It just may be newbies...eBay has hooked up with some promotion that offers "points" to new bidders...you don't have to win, mind you, and you don't have to PAY if you win, to get your"points" all you have to do is bid, and they encourage to bid offten to rack up your points.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Go to Safe Harbor forums for more on this subject.
Just another example of eBay's head up it's a**!

robert