[BobbyStrawberry]

Originally Posted by raulus

It does seem like this discussion largely comes down to a question of whether the closing mechanism is a feature or a bug. Do you love the thrill of the chase, and enjoy a late night bidding like a drunken sailor against other drunken sailors? Or do you prefer to check out at 8pm and get a good night's sleep?

A big part of it probably also comes down to how badly you want the stuff that you're chasing. If you have to have it, and refuse to accept the possibility of defeat, then you probably are willing to sacrifice some sleep to make it happen.

If you're a bit more ambivalent, then maybe you submit your max bid the day before the auction ends, and then check back in on Monday morning to see whether you won anything.

I suppose there's also the question of whether you can afford to win everything that you put a max bid in on. And if not, then you're stuck staying up late and needing to manage it all in real time.

Just thinking about it makes me start to wonder if all of this effort is really worth it, for the honor of paying gigantic sums of sweet, sweet cash in exchange for cardboard. I guess that depends on your own calculus and value system. Of course, I say that now, simply because there haven't been many auctions of late with much that it is very tempting to me, at least at the prices going down. Often I'm only mildly interested in a few bits, and typically the prices have exceeded my appetite by about a week before closing, so I can check out early. But if some great stuff comes along that I can't live without, then all of a sudden I'll go to great lengths to make it mine.

Of course, being a left-coaster, the average auction doesn't require that I sacrifice as much sleep as is required of the east coast crowd. So there's also that.

Yes, I think it comes down to priorities. Put me in the "prefers a good night's sleep" category. Something about staying up half the night and morphing into an adrenaline junkie in order to acquire a piece of cardboard just kind of gives me perspective - like, "maybe I should just not spend this money anyway.." I've actually been more impulsive on auctions that end at a reasonable time.

For me to stay up and go the distance into the wee hours, them item needs to be BOTH something I really, really want AND a good value. (Which almost never happens at the big auction houses, at least on stuff I'm interested in.)