LOTG Auctions closing rules

[benjulmag]

My issue with an AH rationalizing a 3am closing time by saying a bidder can leave a max bid whenever that bidder decides he wants to go to sleep is that such a max bid might not reflect how high the bidder will really go once he/she learns he/she has been outbid. This concern is not mere theorizing, but reflects how humans function. There have been numerous occasions, this LOTG auction being the most recent, where I ended up bidding substantially higher than I originally intended. I believe it is a human trait for a person, upon learning he/she has been outbid, to cause that person to reconsider how high he/she will be willing to bid. In the end the person might not change his/her bid; but I believe in many occasions he/she will. That is why, whenever anybody asks me how high I will be willing to bid for an item, to respond by saying I won't know until I am faced with the prospect of being outbid.

In this most recent LOTG auction, I won the lot I did by staying up to 3am. The earlier max bid I placed, after which I went to bed, only to wake up before the auction ended, I ended up raising by several intervals once I learned I had been outbid.

I would respectfully ask Al to consider, as a previous poster suggested, moving the entire ending process up by 2 or 3 hours. That way the AH can give all its bidders the chance to bid on other lots once they have been outbid on a previous more-favored lot (something over the years I have done a number of times (and being grateful the closing format allowed me to do that)), but at the same time allow bidders to go to sleep at some reasonable hour knowing that the auction has closed.