Hello Ros,
Thank you for your question about whether or not you can bid against yourself. We have a help page on this, but it is pretty dry. We are going to update the page as follows.
On your auction, click the link below to see the bidding history of the item. On the right side, you can see a "show automatic bids" link.
203020665826?item=
203020665826">https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/
203020665826?item=
203020665826
In this situation, the answer is indeterminate because it is a private auction, and therefore, the identities of the bidders are not disclosed. Even though the bidder userid's are generally blocked with the notation "a******b", it is possible in that situation to see if the same bidder is "climbing the bid ladder" to try to beat your bid.
From the bid history, it doesn't look like anyone did that, so you probably didn't affect it too much. Someone else bid $740. The other person's bids brought the price up to $740 and then you paid the minimum bid increment over that.
In most situations, however, if you bid twice on an item, and another bidder comes in between the bids, then you have bid against yourself. To understand why, we must consider the psychology of the situation. The other buyer was alerted to your interest, and then attempted to outbid you. Regardless of whether or not they had the higher bid, they raised the price of the item to their bid plus the minimum bid increment.
If you have not bid on the item, then they would likely have bid lower. No one knows whether or not their bid would've been the same. It follows that you have bid against yourself --- although in this situation, probably not by very much.
Thank you for taking the time to write in. Please let us know if you have any other questions or follow-up comments.
bidslammer
