As someone who ran auctions for many years, this was always an issue that concerned me. The problem I see is there is nothing in the rules to compel bidders to place early bids. Many auction houses have initial bids close at 9:00 PM, but many bidders don't even start placing their final bids until the wee hours of the morning. Why should they? There is nothing in the rules that forces them to do so.
If there was a rule that stated "initial bids must be in by 9:00, and if you don't start bidding by 10:00 you will be disqualified from further bidding", everybody would bid early.
What I've discovered is auction houses for the most part don't really care. They are terrified of losing bids due to rules that are too stringent or too complicated. So they don't care if bidders have to stay up until 6:00 AM as long as that 6:00 AM bid puts a little more money in everyone's pocket.
It would be easy to come up with a system to end by 11:00 or midnight if auction houses were motivated to do so. But their only motivation is to get as many bids as possible. So it's unlikely the system will change much at all.
I always leave a ceiling bid and go to bed. I've taken the position that if I can't trust that the ceiling bid will be handled properly, then I shouldn't be bidding at all with that auction house. But I know this is a topic with a lot of different opinions.
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