bidders cannot see each others bids and cannot bid twice. The FBI is retarded.
Actually, AFAIK, who defines the method of auction is the law and/or the USMS. The FBI just hands the coins over to the USMS, once cleared for auction; they have no authority over the auction process, and don't care about it (except for barring DPR from the auction).You must think with their logic to understand why they are doing it that way. It is not part of their job's mission to make money for the government. That is the job of the IRS and other tax collectors. Seized property is public property, and therefore the government is required to use it for the public good. The official purpose of those auctions is to exchange public property of various odd types, originating from seizures, for a roughly equivalent amount of dollars, which are easier to employ in the public interest than rolls-royces, mansions, or bitcoins. The main concern of the USMS auction staff is to avoid breaking the relevant laws, in particular making sure that the final buyer does not get unfair advantage over other citizens (such as he would get if he bought through a private deal, or at a small fraction of market price).
The main advantage of an open English or Dutch auction (with repeated bidding) is that the final price is probably higher than one would get with sealed bids. But the USMS does not care much for that. One big disadvantage is that the bidders must assemble to bid in person. (An open auction via internet would require a lot more work to set up than a sealed-bid one, and, among other things, it could create legal headaches for the USMS if some bidder were to be put at disadvantage by network problems at the USMS end.)
Sealed-bid auction (which is the norm for awarding government contracts, at least here in Brazil) is less work for everybody, safer, and as fair to all bidders as it could be.
