One thing that I haven't seen before on an auction site is the option to hold a silent auction. If you don't know what a silent auction is, it's where bidders do not get to see any other bids besides their own. At the end of the auction, whoever has the highest bid is the winner.

There's no sniping, no shilling, and you might actually get more money.

Think about this. On eBay, your high bid is automatically lowered to be just slightly higher than the next highest bid. With a silent auction, the high bidder could have bid WAY more than the next highest, but the important thing is that everybody entered the price they felt comfortable with.

I think silent auctions could actually bring more money if it was a rare item especially, because of the "fear of loss" factor. Each bidder knows that the other bidders want the item, and they also know that everybody else is probably going to put in a higher bid than they would normally, trying to beat the high bid. The bids could be quite a bit higher than normal.

I would use a silent auction feature if there was a site that had it. What does everyone else think about this?

I think that is an excellent idea. I don't know why ebay has not done this as of yet. It wouldn't be that hard for them to do. It would be a great idea for cars too. : )

I think as long as you would still be able to set your reserve price it would work well.

eBay does have a submit best offer option, but this is as close as they come to a silent auction. Also, the best offer is generally less than the starting bid anyway, since it is mostly used by people who don't want to pay the listed price.

It would be a nice feature, but I agree with you on the reserve price thing. That would definitely be needed as well.

I wonder how many bidders would be interested, though. I'd have to want an item an awful lot to take part in a silent auction online. Part of the fun of an auction is keeping an eye on the bids.

That's why it would work so well for rare and collectible items.

People WOULD want it badly in that case.

Yes, keeping an eye on the bids is part of the fun, but sometimes it's also a total pain. If there's an item you really want, you have to check back a thousand times because of the auto-bidding feature.

I think silent auctions are a great idea for all around -- I bet the seller would make more for sure, and it's true that the buyer would only offer the amount that he/she were comfortable with. I would love to be a part of somethign like this. Especially as a seller. :P

I think you'd find that prices actually go lower. Often, buyers are worked into a frenzy by the bidding process ("what's another $5?") and pay more than they would if they were to set their maximum and not see the bidding progression.

It's not a bad idea.. But how would you keep shill and prank bidders away form it?
There some good points to a "S A" but there some bad pionts too.
But I guess you have to take the good with the bad..

I don't know about prank bidders, but shilling would be pointless if nobody could *see* the bid - the whole point of shilling is to drive up the price with 'false' bids, and that couldn't happen with this sort of auction. I think I'd try it, if it were available!

Shilling would be impossible. If anything, by shill bidding, people would accidently win the auction, which as far as I know is not the prupose of shill bidding.

With this system, the highest bid would win, and bids would be hidden until the end of the auction.