Timed auctions (Premium)

A bid is held, not promised. The money leaves your balance the moment you place it.

Choose Timed auction in the sell window instead of buy it now. The price you set becomes the starting bid.

The money is held

A bid is taken from the bidder immediately and refunded the moment they are outbid. That means the winner can always pay, and nobody can bid money they have already spent somewhere else. An auction house that only records a promise ends with a winner who cannot pay and a seller who cannot sell.

Anti-snipe

A bid inside the last bidding.anti-snipe-seconds pushes the end back by bidding.anti-snipe-extend-seconds. Without it every auction is won by whoever has the lowest ping in the final half second, which is a reflex test rather than a market.

The seller cannot pull it

Once an auction has a bid on it, its seller cannot cancel. People bid real money on the promise that the item is genuinely for sale, and letting a seller withdraw the moment a bid disappoints them is how a market stops being trusted. Staff can still remove one, and the bidder is refunded when they do.

Minimum bids

A new bid must beat the current one by bidding.min-increment-percent or bidding.min-increment-flat, whichever is larger. The bid window offers the minimum, a slightly larger step, and a box for anything else, because most bids are the minimum and typing it every time is paperwork.