Originally Posted by
Moonshae
If people bought on eBay like it was intended originally...you enter your max bid and then walk away, and the person willing to pay the most got the item. It's an auction where you don't have to keep bidding. But with people bidding only in the last few seconds to keep the price down, there's no incentive for the seller to start at a low price. It makes more sense to start the bidding at the minimum price you'd accept for the item, and let the bidders fight from there.
A different auction site found the solution to this; the auction had an end time, but if a bid was placed in less than 10 minutes prior to the end, the auction would extend another 10 minutes, and so on until no new bids were placed for 10 minutes. It would be interesting to see what would happen if eBay tried it.