Quootie, your tactic is called "nibbling" and is a sure way to keep bumping the price up and up!
Doglover, work out the absolute maximum you would be willing to pay for this. Think hard about it. If you decide you would pay £100 - what if someone else bid £101? Would you say "oh damn I wish I had bid £102?" Keep mentally pushing your bid up until you absolutely would not pay another penny for this item.
Then go to www.vrane.com and place a "snipe" for this auction. You can sit and snipe manually by having 2 windows open as mentioned earlier, but that relies on you being at your computer at the end of an auction. Vrane will place the bid for you a few seconds before it finishes.
Always add on a few pence (like 27p or so) to your final maximum bid, to avoid missing out by a few pence. Bidding at the last minute avoids having your maximum nibbled up by people like Quootie , and bidding your maximum all in one go avoids shilling from the seller, and that awful feeling of getting outbid at the end when you realise you actually would have paid more.
There may well be other people sniping the item you are after - the only way to beat them is to bid your maximum right at the end. If they still outbid you - well, that's fine, isn't it? They were willing to pay more than you.
Hope this helps and that you get your item