This happened in one of the Monopoly games I had a while ago.
It was a 3-player game. Two players were in prison when the incident occurred. The third player (let's call him Joe) landed on the unowned property in his turn. This is what he said:
I don't want to buy it for the base price. Therefore, the property should go to an auction. I'm willing to bid $1 for this property. No-one else can bid, since both of you are in prison, so - I won the auction.
Is this legal in the game of Monopoly?