I was thinking about this to see if there was a way to combine the best options for both the all lots at once closing method and the each lot closes on its own way. The advantage for the each lot closes individually is that you don't need to stay up all night to figure out if you've won the lot. However, if there are 10 lots that you are interested in, and you only have a certain budget, then you may end up not bidding on certain lots in order to try to get the ones you want. However, if you end up losing those lots, you usually can't go back to your other lots, because those lots have also closed by that time. You can do this for the auction where all lots close at once, but you usually can't go to sleep either.
This may be too complicated, but what if you set up these rules:
(1) You must place an initial bid before extended time in order to bid on that lot during extended time and after.
(2) On the closing day of the auction, you have a longer extended time, say from 7pm EST - 10pm EST. All lots in the auction stay open during this time. However, if there are no new bids on a lot during this extended time, the lot immediately closes once extended time is over.
(3) When extended time is finished, all lots that received a bid during extended time enter the 30 minute individual lot by lot closing method. As usual, if the lot does not receive a bid after 30 minutes, the lot closes. Otherwise, the 30 minute timer resets.
The advantage of this is that it allows auctions that don't have may bids to just close early. You realize what you have won and can use that information in the next extended time. The disadvantage of course is confusion on what lots are going close at what time.
A similar idea is do the all lots close at one time with the 30 minute rule but with a tweak.
(1) As before, you must place an initial bid before extended time in order to bid on that lot during extended time and after.
(2) On the closing day of the auction, you have your extended time start at 8pm EST with the thirty minute rule. However, the timer does not reset after 30 minutes. Instead, the first extended session ends after 30 minutes, e.g., 8:30pm EST. All lots that received a bid during extended time will be open during the next 30 minute extended time from 8:30pm - 9pm EST. If there were no bids, the lot would close. This would continue for multiple extended sessions, where hopefully more and more lots would close. At a set time, say 11pm EST, the extended sessions would be shortened to 15 minutes. Then at 1am EST, it would again be shortened to 5 minutes.
This method may give buyers more clarity on whether they've already won an item or the price is now above their max bid, so they have the option to move onto other lots. Or it could cause mass chaos and confusion since bidders again may not know which lots are closing at what time.
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