REA Clock?

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Posted By: Joann

Maybe I'm missing something here? I thought these major auctions had been going until 3 or 4 or 5ish in the morning for years.

The Ruth doubled in price, went up $220K, in the hour between about 1:40 and 2:40 a.m. How could he have ended the auction when a premier lot was taking $10K jumps? I know it's a pain in the rear to have auctions run so late, but in this case I can't see how it was not the best thing for both sellers and buyers - at least the Ruth card suggests that.

And I've never followed one of these to the end - I usually put in a high bid at some point and call it a night - but I thought that this went the same ways as those I have followed. The auction shows an end time of X:30 a.m. You watch until X:28 ... X:29 ... and then at X:30 you either get an Auction Closed message or the time left now updates to X:45 and you start the process over again. I mean ... there was a clock, wasn't there?

I think the only difference in this method is that for the old way the only way to get the Auction Closed was no bids in that 15 minutes. Now Rob reserves the right to put up Auction Closed even if there are bids in that 15 minutes if those bids are minimal. He sent out a great email yesterday explaining how some people would bid on minor, cheap lots to hold the auction open for premium items - trying to outlast everyone else.

So ... coming from someone that was not struggling to stay awake at 3:42 in the morning, I guess I'm not seeing how this is that different from what's been done in the past.

And Dave F made a great call. It would be much much better if there were a way to see what exactly was getting bid on late in the game. Otherwise it is kind of just looking at a screen.

Joann