This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, literally within the last 2 mins someone bid a higher price for an item and then I got the second chance offer at my highest bid. I didn't proceed with it, but instead emailed the seller asking if he was willing to sell the item for my original bid price rather than my highest. He said he couldn't do it.
I noticed that he had an identical item for sale, everything about the listing was identical. The latest bid price was lower than my bid for the original item so I left it but kept it in my watch list.
I waited until the clock got down to about 10 seconds then placed my bid at a few cents higher than the current bid (still lower than my original bid for the first item). I ended up winning the item for less than what I put on the first item.