Curt - I can't put my finger on the source of the statistic right now, but I've read (and believed) that across eBay as a whole, approx. 33% of all bids are placed in the first 48 hours of an auction, 33% in the last 24 hours, and the balance between the two extremes. It may well be true that for specific collectible categories (like chips), more action occurs later than sooner, but that's not a comment on the auction format itself, as much as it is a comment on collector behavior in "our" category.

eBay has never released any figures on the percentage of all listings that never receive at least one bid, but I suspect it is far from "most". An outside publication once reported a "sell through" rate of 60%, but I have no idea where they got that number.

Months ago, when eBay raised the listing fees by a nickle, one of the reasons they mentioned was the hopes that it would minimize some of the "clutter", which I took as the endless stream of "Leaving eBay! Fantastic CDROM bargain!" type listings, and all the other junk that never seems to sell. But, at 30 cents a pop, people are free to list whatever they want, even if it has little or no chance of selling. :)