So...auction house endings....

[asphaltman]

Tim-

I've never understood worrying much about when the auctions finally end. I usually put in my top ceiling bid and let it ride and just wait til morning to see what happened. Now, can I do that with every auction house? Nooooooooo.

[Abravefan11]

Based on your original comment this is less fair to the consignors. If I can't stay up and have to put in an auto bid and ultimately loss the lot, I wasn't able to switch my money to another lot.

I know there has to be a cutoff somewhere, but if we all know the extended bidding is going to be at minimum six hours, why not start it earlier in the day to put your target closing time closer to a reasonable hour for all involved?

[benjulmag]

Interesting question whether starting the extended bidding earlier (say noon) would make a difference. I think people know REA will let it go to 3am-4am and bid accordingly. As best as I could tell, bids were still coming in around every 2 minutes or so when they closed it, but with all the callbacks over I guess Rob decided it was time for it to end.

REA to me, despite the torture of having to stay up so late, is as good an example as any of the advantages of closing all lots at the same time. Over the years I have bid in that auction, what I ended up winning was materially different (and much more to my liking) than what I would have ended up with if lots closed individually. I, like any collector with limited financial resources, prioritize the lots I have interest in. Only when I know the lot that is my first choice has become too expensive will I try to win a less important lot. Or, from the flip perspective, if a less important lot were to close first, by trying to win it I risk not having enough left to give it my best shot to win my first choice.

[Jeff D]

I wonder if the unknown closing time of the auction hurts final prices.
It's obvious that, like sniping, some people want to wait until the "end" to place their bids, to avoid getting bid-up, among other reasons.

If you never know when the end is, you don't really know when to strike. And the fact that people were still bidding every minute or two up until the auction closed means that there were still people holding out on their top bids.

Why not pick a time in the auction, late in the evening, to switch over to a lot-by-lot ending? That way you can still maximize bidding on particular lots, without having a random end time when you're shut out of ALL lots.

Whatever the advantages there are to ending all at once, seem to me to be lost with a random closing time. Knowing that there is always going to be at least 1 bid on at least one lot every 15 minutes, until forever frankly, you might as well just pick 3:30 am and end the auction then. That's essentially what's going on, but at least people would have a final shot to place their "snipe" bids.

There's no REAL 15 minute end, so why pretend there is?

[asphaltman]

Another option could be extended bidding over a couple days. Why not end an auction at 4pm, begin the extended bidding and stop it for the day at 8pm. Then it starts back the next evening again at 6pm or 8pm or whatever if there is still activity....keeps it from being 3-4am that day and confines it to the night time hours when most are still awake, even if it is over a couple days.

[Doug]

I personally wish the lots ended individually since the card I won didn't have a bid in the past week and would have ended at 4:15 PM if that was the case. Another option would be to put an end time on the extended bidding, but it would probably have to be a fairly limited amount of time so that people would go ahead and bid instead of having everyone wait several hours and try to snipe at the last second.

[barrysloate]

The one flaw in all of these auctions, and I have never been able to come up with a solution, is there is no urgency to bid in a timely fashion. If REA closes at 4:00 PM for qualifying bids, and people are still bidding at 4:00 AM, we can assume that some bidders wait 10-12 hours after the initial close to start bidding. That is a flaw in the system, but as I said, I don't know how one could fix it. There is no practical way to offer an incentive to bid early, such as a small discount, so perhaps something could be built into the system to compel bidders to start earlier. Curious if anyone else has come up with a better idea.