[jefferyepayne]

I've been beating the drum for B for a decade. And you might notice that more and more auction houses have shifted to lot by lot closing over the past 5 years. There is NO EVIDENCE that closing an auction at 4am EST results in more bids or higher returns for consigners. NONE. ZERO. NADDA. It is ridiculous. Lot by lot closing forces all of those late-night stallers to bid actively and frequently. I don't recall any lot-by-lot auction item I've been interested in taking longer than an hour to close after extended bidding has begun.

The reality is that late-night closings help everybody except those on the East Coast where the majority of collectors still live. PST benefits as it is earlier and easier to stay awake for. And ironically Europe benefits as they are up the next day by the time some of these auctions close!

I made the decision 10 years ago to stop bidding on auctions that don't close lot by lot but make a few exceptions for an item I see that I really really want. But because I just can't stay up that late, I always set a maximum bid and go to bed. I would bet I win items doing that less than 5% of the time while my win rate is much higher when I'm awake at closing. The reality is you don't really know what your max bid is until you are faced with bidding and potentially winning or giving up. When bidding on many items, it is also impossible to set max bids for all the items as you don't expect to win them all so plan to reallocate $$$ once an item goes beyond your limit.

It's time for late night auction closings to stop. Please join me in pushing for this to happen. My football forum has been discussing taking a more proactive role in pushing for lot by lot closings for all auctions. We are still discussing how best to accomplish this but have some ideas I'm happy to share with Net54 if enough members here want to help push for change.

jeff

P.S; I'm find with a double close method as long as the double close is over by midnight EST.