Quoted from eightball8:

My niece works for a major network, and she said that they are sending undercover auction buyers to auctions this spring/summer in Cincinnati, Nashville, Anaheim, and a few other locations, to create a story on how auctioneers allow sellers to bid up their own items, or allow their "buddies" to win/bid items at their auction. I guess they have been attending for the last year or so and have some great footage. She said one seller was caught on hidden camera switching a board after the game was sold to a young couple. She also said they have footage of an auctioneer's relative in Cincinnati bidding up a pinball machine to raise price vs an online bidder. Cant' wait to see this on national tv!

Quoted from planters49:

I really don't understand the problem with the owners and others bidding on their own machine. If you don't set a max bid price for yourself and stick to it, you should not be attending auctions to start with.

Quoted from WIZ:

Who, the owners or the story tellers?

Quoted from Erik:

Ops bidding up their own stuff is a necessary evil imo. No problem with it
The funniest thing to me is when they used to do the ghost bids. Not sure if that still happens, but it was like:
"Next up, a Terminator Two. Terminator twoooo.
I got $2000, now 21, 22. Do I hear 23? .. <crickets>
Terminator two, we'll start the bidding at 800..."