Since the sellers pay the freight on eBay in listing fees and final value fees it seems to me that eBay should be trying to maximize the amount sellers get for their items. I really feel that changing the closing format to not ending an auction until some set time period passes without a new bid - say like 2-5 minutes - would produce better results for sellers. It would make it work like real world, live auctions - time tested and accepted way of selling things at auction. Those people who are able to determine their max well in advance could still do so but the Cheap Charlie's like me who don't know how bad they want things until it looks like they are going to lose them would get another chance to reconsider....

I don't think eBay will ever make this change. The code for closing auctions is just to critical to try and change. Besides, 100 million people know how it works now and it would be a major upset to change it. I suspect the software for closing auctions has not changed - except for a re-host - since the guy first wrote it to sell his Pez collection.

Chas