No, that's actually still the market deciding. It's a perfectly standard type of auction that discourages low-ball bids. Bidding is secret, you only get one bid, and you don't know who or if anyone else is bidding.
If you want it, you make your best offer for what you're willing to pay for it, and if someone else bid more they get it. If you would have been willing to pay more with more rounds of bidding, you should have bid that from the start.

Open-bid auctions get better prices for sellers when there are a lot of bidders, and better prices for buyers when there are few. Given there were two bidders, it's fair to seek the most either party will bid, rather than seeking $1 more than the maximum the loosing party will pay.