Thud, I will try to explain a little better. 

First of all, this has nothing to do with buyers regret.  The proxy bid is an amount that is placed "in confidence" with the auctioneer or auction company ahead of time.  It is not meant to establish the bid but rather limit the top bid on my behalf.  The way it is supposed to work is that the auctioneer or an associate bids on my behalf as the others bid until my proxy is reached.  After that, the auction has to continue without my "proxy" bidding for me since it has exceeded my top bid.

In the case of the auctions where it has stopped right on my bid with me being the "winner", it smells of an auctioneer that had the inside information on my top bid and artificially ran the auction up until reaching my proxy.  Normally the top proxy will not be the exact top bid as the bidding increments will be something different than my proxy.  Also the proxy will usually be exceeded or never reached, in either case it is not typical that my exact proxy is the sale price discovered under "true" auction results.


As to the legitimacy of the results, if the auction stopped at any amount below my proxy it would indicate that it was likely a fair process, all though it still could have been nurtured a little by the auctioneer but stopped short to look like it was legit.  I have bought lots of cattle by proxy and it has never ever been the result that I bought them for the exact amount of the proxy.    Sometimes if you are in attendance, you will also see a sucker/victim bidding against the Coke machine or some other object that the auctioneer selects for his eye movement.  The farm auctions seem to be where you find the crooked auction folks.  I hope this helps you understand my point.