I regularly look at the bid history and will see something like the following:
What’s the point if the seller can just constantly bump up the price and give a perception of bidding?
If I’m not mistaken that’s just because of the proxy system.
What happened was your first bidder put in for the starting bid and set the max to $100. Whatever other bidders were trying to bid for the lowest price which was less than bidder 1. Until the next bidder finally outbid the $100 amount the bid will always show as that first bidder
It’s not because the seller is bumping it’s the system doing what it’s supposed to do. Show that there were bidding attempts and that first bidder was willing to pay more.
That doesn’t make sense since there’s lots of other auctions with starting amounts and 0 bids. This happens on a select few and seems anomalous; it looks like someone trying to bump up the price and create action.
If there’s 0 bids then there’s no bidding history.
Let’s pretend:
An auction starts at $5 and there are no bids. You need to bid in increments of AT LEAST $5
I see this auction and know that I will pay up to $100 for that animal. My bid shows up at $5 even though I bid $100.
Kelly comes by and sees my $5 bid. They bid $10 because they don’t want to pay more. The bid is lower than my $100 max. The bid shows up with my name at $10.
John comes by and sees the 2 bids I have at $10. He knows that means I probably want that animal so he bids his max he wants to pay instead of $5 more dollars. He bids $50. The bid is still lower than my $100. The bid shows up as my name at $50.
Tim sees the $50. The animal is worth more than that and sees my 3 proxy bids. He bids his max of $120. That’s more than my bid of $100. The next bid shows as Tim’s name at $105.
I get the alert from MM that I am outbid. I decide I can spare 10 more and bid $110. That’s lower than Tim’s $120. The bid is now Tim at $110.
The seller cannot change the pricing once the auctions are started.
If for some reason you believe someone is actually using a proxy to raise the bidding amounts for the seller that is something that you need to report to MorphMarket Support.