Appreciate the suggestions, Don. I try to keep a pretty close eye on this. I am also hoping that people have integrity and won't be editing their posts. I will know if they do though. Perhaps instead of having a certain time on the 13th, I can just end it at some point on the 13th? It may upset some people who aren't by their computer, but to counteract that...say, if you bid $62 on wed but intend to bump it $98 closer to close, you probably should have bid the $98 to begin with. Does that make sense? So if I say I am ending it between 12pm EST and 11:59 EST on the 13th, that should prevent sniping and editing....right?
An auction needs a specific closing time - you don't go changing the terms mid-way through the process.
This is how eBay sniping works.
Joe Sixpack wants an X-Gadget and sees one selling on eBay. He knows how badly he wants it, knows just how much he's willing to pay for it, but has heard stories about shill bidding and canceled bids pushing up prices and forcing people to pay their maximum bid instead of catching a break - and Joe wants to catch a break. So Joe decides he's just going to bid some portion of what he's really willing to pay.
Now, Harry Snipe-Bidder III lies in wait, hoping that someone like Joe placed the last bid and is currently near his maximum. Harry swoops in at the last available moment, just barely exceeding Joe's posted maximum bid even though Joe was willing to pay more, and Joe loses out on getting the X-Gadget to Harry.
If Joe wasn't near his max, Harry could still push him there using an illegal "bot" program to push the bidding with rapid, continuous bids until Harry's finally the high bidder, though there's a chance that rather than win, time will expire first and he may have simply forced Joe to pay more.
If you want to catch a deal on eBay, bid like Joe and be prepared to be disappointed more often than not. But there's a key difference between eBay and this type of auction - there's no "automated bidding" mechanism in play here and no sniper-bots. You bid what you bid, period. Someone outbids you, you have to get your butt over here and bid more before the deadline. Alternately, you can just drop a higher, more realistic bid in the first place. You won't catch one of those legendary eBay bargains people love talking about, but you also will be less likely to be sniped at the last moment - and even if you are, you'll be high enough in the bidding that you wouldn't want to push higher anyway at that point.
Sniping works for the sniper only if people are underbidding the item's real value in their eyes, a practice that happens on eBay all the time. If you want to actually get the item up for bids in a non-eBay type of auction environment like this, you simply offer a real bid that's higher than others are willing to pay. If I threw up a $200 bid right now, Harry Snipe-Bidder III would be forced to either go higher than me or go home, and assuming he chooses to go home, I get the item, period. Harry can attempt a last-minute higher bid to try to avoid a "feeding frenzy", but if his bid is three seconds later than someone else's last-minute bid of the same amount, he lose unless he can re-bid FAST. He may also hit a data bottleneck somewhere on the net and watch his last-minute higher bid take too long, only to be posted within seconds after bidding has ended.
You've given a stated end-time of 10pm (10:00:00pm) EST on April 13th. Now, since that time doesn't actually exist considering that Daylight Saving Time started already for the entire US Eastern Time Zone (D'oh!), we'll correct that to read 11:00:00pm EDT on that date, or for those working internationally, UTC 03:00:00 on Saturday 14 April 2012.
In simpler terms, the auction ends at 3AM Greenwich Mean Time on the 14th. Any bids posted after that time will not be accepted.
I've heard of a more interesting way of handing last minute bids that absolutely kills snipe bidders - but it's too late to use that here, since you've already started accepting bids and it would be unfair to change the terms after the auction starts.
Sniping works because the bidding has a fixed, hard deadline - a higher bid will still lose if it's entered too late. Some online auctions are experimenting with the idea of altering the deadline when there's late bidding. Basically, you set a time period - for example, five minutes. Two conditions need to be met to end the auction - first, that the posted end-time has been reached; second, that there have been no bids made for at least that time period.
The way this works in the real world is that Harry can jump in on Joe's auction and place a late bid in the last five seconds - but he resets the ending of the auction to five minutes after his bid! Joe jumps in and re-bids - and again, the end time is reset to five minutes after THAT bid. Linda I. Gottagetit can run in at that point and outbid Joe and Harry - again resetting the end of the auction to five minutes from her bid. Bidding can continue indefinitely until finally the bidders decide they've had enough and stop bidding for a period of five minutes since the last bid, at which point the auction ends.
This type of bidding can drive up the final selling price if people aren't careful about getting caught up in the frenzy, bidding simply for the sake of bidding. It's another instance where fronting a real, serious bid in the first place will prevent you from getting outbid. Snipers want the item, but they usually also want a bargain, and this type of bidding prevents bargains obtained through the use of delaying tactics. Anyone in his right mind, before even attempting to bid at the last moment, has to think of just how much he's truly willing to part with to win that auction and get that item.
I don't know if a name for this type of auction already exists, but I would call it a "poker auction" since the last-minute bidding feature resembles a long round of betting in a poker game, where everyone has to either call or fold to the highest bet before the round ends. If someone raises, the round continues until no one raises.
