âAdvertisement promoting the Imperial Academy. An Imperial Academy was a military training program run by the Galactic Empire, and primarily focused on training both the enlisted and officer corps of the Imperial Military.
People have created accounts and bid on their own stuff to try to raise the price. If caught, they are deleted from the system by E-bay. As many people wait until the last few minutes to make a bid, it is probably the surest way to win something.
Further discussion about proxy bidding. With eBay's proxy bidding system, the bid that you make just sets an upper bound on the bid that the proxy can make for you. What the proxy will do is keep raising its bid for you, either until its bid is just above the second highest bid or until its bid hits the upper bound.