One technique, frequently recommended by Executors, is to employ a "sentimental auction". Money doesn't take part here, as fairness is ensured by giving each person the same number of points to bid with.
Existing sentimental auctions aren't perfect!
A typical sentimental auction might have everyone attending the same physical location or dialling in to a conference call, bidding on items one by one. Although participants typically do their best to devise and then employ a strategy they won't later regret, invariably bidders will end up spending their points too quickly or too slowly, simply due to the maddengly difficult task of visualising the numbers of items one can realistically win, and how quickly one must spend one's points to win those items.
Why not then go for the obvious solution; simply to allow bidders to retract their bids! Unfortunately that allows mischeivous or "shill bidding", where an unscrupulous bidder retracts a bid to a price level just below the winning price, thus forcing the winner to spend the maximum number of points to win that item. The unscrupulous bidder thus succeeds in weakening his competitors at no cost to himself.
A new Sentimental Auction Website
Subject to demand, I'm planning to develop a sentimental auction website which will address the problems described above. Under the new website:
- Shill bidding is impossible
- Strategy can be changed at any time during the auction.
- Items are priced accurately.
- Similar to Ebay, listings will include photographs, descriptions, etc.
- Auction duration is expected to similar to a traditional auction.
- Costs will comparable to Ebay, possibly much less.
If this would be of any interest to you, please post a comment below, or send me (Ralph) a mail here: ralphpurtcher@hotmail.com. Any feedback, positive or negative, is really appreciated :-)!
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