eBay really has ruined what people think of as 'auctions'. By definition, an auction continues until no one is willing to pay (or bid whatever the currency is) any more. The idea of a set time that the auction instantly ends is really kind of dumb, and eBay is the only company I know of that has ever force-implemented an auction format in this way. eBay _should_ make their auction automatically extend another 5-10 minutes if there's any bid placed in the last 5-10 minutes... I've never understood why they don't do this... I've always wanted to auction something really rare on eBay and clearly state that I _WILL_ end the auction early at some point, pretty much when I feel like it. So if you want to bid, you better bid early, and stay the winning bidder. I think that would be interesting to see the outcome of.
I've never auctioned a pin here, but do we have to set a specific _time_ that the auction ends? I think it should be on a certain _day_, the auction ends after no one offers to increase their bids after a period of time (like an hour or two). Or everyone that's bidding has to state 'this is my final bid' to indicate they are done and can't bid any higher (another thing done in normal live auctions).
Or how about this: At the specific 'end time', no new bids can be placed by anyone except either the top 3 on the leaderboard, or anyone who is currently active in the auction (meaning they placed counter-bids within the last hour or something). They can continue to place bids until they all have decided they've gone as high as they want.
My understanding of the auctions that take place here, however, is that it's up to the seller who the 'winning bid' is (i.e., since it's pins, not currency, it's up to the seller to decide 'I want what user X is offering'). As such, waiting until the last minute to place a 'bid' really makes no sense that I can think of at all.. You could offer every pin you own at the last minute, but if the first person that placed the first bid is only offering one pin, and it's the one the seller wants more than anything in the world, you still won't win.. So what's the point of waiting?
In my opinion, people REALLY need to get out of the mind set of waiting until the last second to bid (it works on eBay I suppose, but even then there can be internet outages, but no other auction works this way. The activity really shouldn't be encouraged, and it does always hurt the seller). If the rules of the board are that the auction ends a certain time, and you waited to even let the seller know you wanted to bid, that's your loss. It's called gambling (in a sense), you gambled that you could bid in the last few seconds, and you lost. Sorry.