“Notice that several of the “bids” are by the same bidder when there were no intervening bids. In other words, these bids are against themselves, or an awkward attempt to inflate the bidding.”
I’m not sure if this is correct. You can enter your maximum bid, and the ebay program will automatically raise your bids until the max is reached. If you put a max of say, $100, and the current bid is $10. Someone else bids $15, ebay will automatically put you in for $20, and so on until your max is reached. I don’t think other bidders names would even appear. Not 100% sure though.
FYI