Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug
Couldn't they just put an end time on the extended bidding? If the auction ends at 4 PM why can't they just say extended bidding ends at midnight or something like that?
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The problem is that Rob wants to make money for himself and his consignors. I won an item that hadn't had a bid put in for three weeks -- and I put my bid in at 2:43 am, as last as possible for obvious reasons. And because I saw so many bids still coming in per minute I knew full well that the auction would not close before 3 am. If Rob closed the lots one at at time the problem of the late ending for the auction would disappear -- but so would a lot of money for him and his consignors and no one should expect that. The longest gap between bids during the extended bidding period was only 2 minutes I believe -- and that happened like once or twice at the most. So even changing to a 2 minute clock would still keep us up all night. He can't force people to bid earlier and to penalize late bidding would only harm him and his consignors.
I suppose one way to deal with this is to close all lots valued at say $2000 or less with a real 15 minute clock after midnight or so. Then at least we'd be able to focus on a significantly less amount of lots and perhaps the intense bidding would end more quickly if the "recent bid" information showed slower bidding. I can't blame the guy for making us all stay up late one night a year when you consider that he's running a business to make money and he's got a $10 million auction running.