Chatted With Bill Goodwin Today

[glchen]

I don't think there is a good solution for this. The best that I can think of, which is relatively simple is split the auction so it ends over multiple days. Legendary and Heritage already do this for individual lot endings, but SCP does it for all lots at once. Instead of over 2days, you can do it over 3 or 4, and have it, if no bids for 15 min, all lots close for the ones that end that day. With fewer lots each day, theoretically, the auction should close earlier each day. One way to divide it is prewar baseball, vintage/modern baseball, other sports/nonsports, memorabilia. The big drawback is that if you want lots from multiple days, you may have multiple long nights ahead of you instead of one long night.

[barrysloate]

Interesting how many different opinions we have here, with no real consensus. Bottom line is the auctioneer has to decide how he wants to end it. If 6:00 AM is too late then he has options to end it sooner. His call.

Auction houses will never do anything that loses them money ... that's why they have zero transparency, why they give you no financial recourse if an item is delivered not as described, and why they do the 15 minute rule for extended bidding.

You're all lucky they don't change that to the 30 minute rule. The longer people have to bid the more opportunities they have to make money.

If the auction houses really wanted to help the collector they'd do away with the extended bidding all together, and end things at a scheduled time, as is done on ebay.

[travrosty]

that's right, they should do it like ebay if they wanted to bring things back to sanity. and if someone feels regret that they didnt get a chance to put in one final topping bid, then simply bid higher earlier in the day. how hard is that?