Photo by The Pixelman on Pixabay

Auctions are an excellent way to sell stuff when no preset market price can be determined efficiently.

I am building an Auction Events Platform for Creators, where using fixed prices for physical creations would grossly undercut creators.

How does an auction work?

Calls in an Auction

In a traditional live auction, an auctioneer stays tuned to the bids from the audience. After an idle period with no bids, he/the auctioneer says,

X dollars, first time,

X dollars, second time,

X dollar, third time,

sold

Of course, if a bid comes in, we start again.

Long Auctions

Over the last ten years, we have been running hybrid antique auctions, with the audience in the IRL hall and the audience online. These auctions last for a whole day, sometimes with 100–200 items.

We observed that the traditional mechanism of calls is too time-consuming, as the competition for a majority of items is relatively short. At the same time, a minority of items cause lengthy competitions.

Place a Timer on Calls

To speed things up, we decide to run the calls on a timer.