Weird and wonderful traditional auction types

I’ve always thought that auctions work best if they carry on while bidders are happy to bid. Most offline (and online) auctions I am familiar continue until no more bids are received – just like the way the standard procurement reverse auction works.

On the other hand eBay is notable for always finishing an auction at a predefined time. This encourages bid sniping where potential buyers tactically try to wait for the last possible moment to get their best bid in. So I was fascinated and entertained to read in “The English Year” by Steve Roud about traditional buying auctions which rely on a fixed time to end rather than continuing indefinitely.

In a candle auction a candle was lit and bids were accepted until the candle went out. Or a pin would be put in a candle and bids would be taken until the candle burned down far enough for the pin to drop out. Apparently this was an officially sanctioned way of running auctions in the 17th century and Steven cites examples where candle auctions still take place in England (on the 6th of April at Tatwell, 13th December at Aldermaston).

Other weird and wonderful (to modern readers) auction types Steven cites are

• The Running Auction that takes place in Bourne, Lincolnshire on the Monday before Easter. This is to auction grazing rights on a piece of land, and bids are accepted for as long as it takes for 2 children to complete a 200 yard race, and
• An auction at Wishford in Wiltshire that takes place on Rogation Monday, also for grazing rights, in which “[b]uyers are summoned by the church bell, about fifteen minutes before sunset, and the parish clerk walks up and down between the church porch and gate while the bidding takes place. As soon as the sun dips below the horizon, he strikes the church key on the gate, and the auction is over”.

Looks like eBay’s approach has a good historical pedigree

The serious point, though, is that these types of auctions that tried to fix a specific end time eventually died out to be replaced by open-ended auctions.

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