Lee, I'm no e-bay expert mate, but have bought a few things off there.
What I do is first decide the maximum I'm willing to pay, then with litterally a few seconds left I'll bid my max. This doesn't mean I PAY the max, it will only ever go one increment higher than someone elses max... that way I either win the auction without getting into a bidding war and pushing the price up, or lose it because there's another proxy bid higher than mine, in which case it's more than I wanted to pay anyway!
Get my drift??
I'm sure there's plenty of e-bay gods about to tell me I'm off my trolley though!!!
good luck with it mate,
nb