I only have a question regarding this recent point by Teerav:
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For the counterweight, you can educate and allow auctions sellers to add a rule that extends the end of their auction by up to three hours if someone bids within an hour of their publicly stated end time. Three hours is enough time to someone that is actively watching an auction to take action with a bid. This rule would also theoretically completely eliminate sniping. And combined with a healthy publicly stated minimum raise bid, the fear of "never ending auctions" wouldnt exist. And even if this rule causes an auctions to extend for 24 hours, thats 6 more bids on an auction that I doubt the seller would complain about.
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(Yes, I suck with the quoting option so I just did this instead).
However, wouldn't high money buyers still be able to snipe anyway? It would only remove low budget sellers from sniping it, as if they snipe it in the last hour, the auction would get extended and it would give others (including the same sniper) to do the same in the next three hours. Let's examine situation A:
A: This rule can be repeated infinitely. If this is what this rule implies, auctions for high and really wanted pokémon can be extended forever if there's no insta (since insta is optional, can be added later into the auction, and depending on the type of auctioneer, some might want it to extend as much as possible to gain absurd amounts of money since they're not in a rush to obtain this money. The others might actually care about getting the money quickly, so if they made auctions without instas (or very high instas) they would be forced to either wait for the bid wars to end or introduce an insta if they hadn't done it before, and they might've needed the cash urgently.
B: This rule can only happen once. Here I see the other issue: If sniper A snipes at the last minute, auction extends and sniper A still has a lot of money, he can wait again until the end of the auction and bid again upping his own previous bid sniping himself by a safe amount (if minimum bid is 100k, for example, he snipes for 300k) to ensure other snipers can't win. This would affect sniper B negatively if he has a low budget, or the exact budget to buy that poke in that auction, since he had calculated there wouldn't be as many snipers. If you want to implement this one, you should make or work around an idea to restrict the same sniper from doing the same over again, and it could be considered unfair: if he has the money, why can't he bid again? And why can't he do it in the same auction?
I understand sniping is an issue, and cancelling auctions too. However, I understand that there is situation A where the seller is not happy with just the starting bid and has gotten a better offer, but this offering person does not want to involve themselves in the auction (since they would be sniped). Thus, the seller just waits and if he's not convinced, he cancels it and sells it to the other bidder. I'm not convinced we should change it in this situation, the poke is 100% in the hands of the seller and he should have 100% control of it as long as he follows rules. I see that it might seem very unfair that they cancel it at the last moment, but thinking about it, the poke is never yours until it ends 100% and the transaction is properly done.
Regarding situation B: If an auctioneer is just repeatedly abusing this rule to do auctions over and over, cancel them all always at the last minute to see who pays the highest and then sell it in the background after auction has been canceled multiple times, I understand they could face consequences due to fake selling/auctioning (Though this is not really specified in rules, as long as I'm not mistaken). since they're just using the forums as price checks, not as real auctions. This is the issue I have with the rule, not if it only happens once twice or thrice, it would only be if an user maliciously exploited this rule over and over again.
Also sorry for the wall of text xD
Proof of the Offer? I was interested in the Dragonite too.
