[sb1]

I guess the question is how did we get to this point?

Various other collectibles from trinkets to multi-million dollar items can be bought at auction, (online and in person) at normal hours of the day, Art, Cars, Coins, Stamps, Wine you name it. NONE of them transact at the wee hours of the morning. Ever see Sotheby's close an auction at 4:00 am, how about Barrett-Jackson or Spectrum?

I guess the auction houses and bidders in sports collectibles are equally to blame, one for setting it up this way and the other for participating in it.

There are a few live auctions annually that receive the same quality of items and same bidders and they last 2-3 hours and everyone is done. Seems like an online auction could be ran the same way. Announce it weeks or months in advance, run it on one night 5-6 hours and end it with an exact time. Actually ending each lot with a predetermined time(one AH actually does this now). Everyone has equal opportunity to bid and bid hard, with an end in sight.

I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of items would realize nearly the same results as any other extended format, in some cases stronger prices due to the last minute bid flurries. In fact the one auction that already does the abrupt planned ending results in heavy last minute max bids, just like Ebay style auctions.

The reason we will probably not see this change happen, actually lies with one party of the auction equation, the consignor. They abhor the thought of their item not getting it's full value and believe that it must be milked out to the last possible second. Most auction houses would feel they had zero chance of getting consignments if they tried to change the existing format. The individual lot ending now used by some AH's had alleviated much of the all night wait, but even then the consignor can feel the item ended too soon and no one can go back and bid later.

Until both the consignor and auction houses both try and accept a format such as the one above and it becomes the norm rather than the exception, we are stuck with the status quo.