I see on ebay there are bidders that are named for instance l***l. There are so many on ebay, just bidding on items, but never winning. Do these just do this to spike the price up?

I think they do that after the bid on an item exceeds $200 to keep the scammers from contacting you back door with second chance offers on expensive items after the bidding is done. You can see the winners name again after the item closes.

Yeah, this is a new eBay thing. High priced items hide the bidders' IDs. But you can click on the ID to see certain stats.

Good to know! Anybody know about when eBay started doing that (just curious)?

Thanks. I was wondering myself what all that was about.

Been a few months now. Part of their continuing changes.