Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
If you're willing to leave auto-bids, or snipes in the case of ebay, closing time is pretty much meaningless.
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Some people are not comfortable leaving auto-bids. Also, auto or snipe bids do not help when a person truly doesn't know how high he/she is willing to bid until faced with losing the lot. That has happened with me. I believe being human there is a subconscious aspect to deciding how high to bid, and sometimes when we set a level we do it believing we will not be topped. Then when we unexpectantly are, we (to our surprise) bid higher.
I have no more desire than the other guy to stay up to some crazy hour waiting for an auction to close. But there have been times when topped on my key lot at the last minute and not having the means or desire to go higher that I shifted course and placed bids on other lots. I would not have been able to do that had those lots closed, and the consignor would not have received maximum price for his/her items.
Some auction houses (
e.g., REA, RMY) have adopted a hybrid system. Start extended bidding earlier and have a sharp cutoff at some designated hour (usually around midnight) at which point the entire auction closes. This method in my view is a good compromise but still allows for last minute snipping.
I've wondered why no auction house has yet to try the following closing method, unless the software doesn't exist -- as the hour gets later and later to either in stages or in one step to reduce the interval after which if no bid is placed the auction closes. So say at 11 PM the interval reduces to 3 minutes, and at midnight it reduces to one minute. My guess is the auction will close fairly quickly once this happens, but it will allow all bidders full opportunity to retain all bidding options until the auction ends.
Like everything else, this method is not perfect, but maybe it will turn out to be the best of imperfect choices.