I did not try to snipe. I was consistently ahead of several hundred bidders and my bid seemed safe. I monitored the auction on an ongoing basis. Their site failed to respond with several minutes remaining. I did not find a mechanism to increase my bid, only to cancel and re-open.
I was not able to express my intent to bid on their auction site. I am sure that this was true of others as well. Not only that, the site does not show the bidding results anymore, they were taken down when the auction was over. I think that an essential aspect of an auction is transparency, and the final results are not transparent.
I think there is a wide open field for anyone else to compete at auctioneering.
And Furthermore ...
Some of you may remember that I held an auction on the blockchain. It was a multi winner auction, and it ended at a certain block number. All bids included in or before that block were valid. I have had an interest in auctions for a very long time. It was trivial to increase a bid. It was less trivial to see standings during the auction, but that is an opportunity for someone to develop software to interpret a known auction address on the blockchain.
What is missing from my auction, and from this auction, is a mechanism similar to eBay where a maximum bid can be entered and the little bump bids are made automatically. That is also a feature that an auction companion could implement on the individual bitcoiner's machine.
In contrast to this auction, my auction results are still visible, as the bids and refunds are in the blockchain. The entirety of "approvals" to move payments within the TradeHill system seems to be a pointless labor cost to me. I need help to see the motivation or utility of it.
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