bidding well before an auction ends is pointless!
all that will happen is the next person will outbid you, if he fails he will try again, etc! then a bargain suddenly becomes expensive!
if someone is the highest bidder with say £30 as his highest bid, and the auction is on £25 and he checks with 1 min to go and he is still the highest bidder, then he's gonna sit there and wait to win!
if you get in with £35 as your highest bid with 20 seconds to go then you will most likely win the auction!
if you had bid £35 with 5 mins to go then this would give the other guy the opportunity to bid even more which just bumps the auction up! great if you are selling something but not if you are the buyer!
common sense! really dont see why people have bidding wars with days left on the auction! pointless, altho on the other hand....if people didnt do this then all auctions would be on £0 till the last minute!
so basically if you are clever enough to understand how to win, then you have the edge on the other 98% of the eBay thickos that are fighting for the highest bid with 7 days remaining!!