So...auction house endings....

[Jeff D]

I wonder if the unknown closing time of the auction hurts final prices.
It's obvious that, like sniping, some people want to wait until the "end" to place their bids, to avoid getting bid-up, among other reasons.

If you never know when the end is, you don't really know when to strike. And the fact that people were still bidding every minute or two up until the auction closed means that there were still people holding out on their top bids.

Why not pick a time in the auction, late in the evening, to switch over to a lot-by-lot ending? That way you can still maximize bidding on particular lots, without having a random end time when you're shut out of ALL lots.

Whatever the advantages there are to ending all at once, seem to me to be lost with a random closing time. Knowing that there is always going to be at least 1 bid on at least one lot every 15 minutes, until forever frankly, you might as well just pick 3:30 am and end the auction then. That's essentially what's going on, but at least people would have a final shot to place their "snipe" bids.

There's no REAL 15 minute end, so why pretend there is?

[asphaltman]

Another option could be extended bidding over a couple days. Why not end an auction at 4pm, begin the extended bidding and stop it for the day at 8pm. Then it starts back the next evening again at 6pm or 8pm or whatever if there is still activity....keeps it from being 3-4am that day and confines it to the night time hours when most are still awake, even if it is over a couple days.

[Doug]

I personally wish the lots ended individually since the card I won didn't have a bid in the past week and would have ended at 4:15 PM if that was the case. Another option would be to put an end time on the extended bidding, but it would probably have to be a fairly limited amount of time so that people would go ahead and bid instead of having everyone wait several hours and try to snipe at the last second.

[barrysloate]

The one flaw in all of these auctions, and I have never been able to come up with a solution, is there is no urgency to bid in a timely fashion. If REA closes at 4:00 PM for qualifying bids, and people are still bidding at 4:00 AM, we can assume that some bidders wait 10-12 hours after the initial close to start bidding. That is a flaw in the system, but as I said, I don't know how one could fix it. There is no practical way to offer an incentive to bid early, such as a small discount, so perhaps something could be built into the system to compel bidders to start earlier. Curious if anyone else has come up with a better idea.