kane, the thing you need to know about ebay is that bidding early is useless if you really want an item. all it does is drive up the price and someone else will snatch it last minute. the trick is to put in your maximum bid with a minute or two left on the sale. that's really the only way to get something besides totally overbidding early. it's not unethical, it's just the way it works on ebay. i had too many frustrations with people snatching an item from me last minute until i started this practice.