That's known as a dutch auction and it can be highly effective. I know all about them since wholesale flowers are sold this way (hence the dutch connection) an

That's known as a dutch auction and it can be highly effective. I know all about them since wholesale flowers are sold this way (hence the dutch connection) and my brother in law's family is in flowers. It's a very fast form of auction since a single bid wins each lot. Rather than the price being driven up in fits and starts it drops at a steady and fixed rate. Similar to the article's authors dutch actions improve the average at the expense of the extremes (in this case towards sellers). Dutch actions don't often have the sky high prices some traditional actions can drive rare items to but they tend to sustain high average prices because you must bid without reference to the value someone else may place on the item. A traditional auction you may sneak away with an item for less than you expected if no one bids against you. In a dutch action you will likely pay closer to the maximum price you were willing to spend since the longer the wait the greater the risk someone snaps it up without any recourse. I hadn't ever thought about a dutch action for highly coveted copies of the same item though. It's very interesting idea that would likely kill much of the launch day line up (especially if preorders were accepted online). If the 100 the store has to sell are the only ones that would ever be the prices would be driven into the stratosphere but if you know you can wait a week or 2 for your preorder to be filled and pay the actual "retail" price that's a strong incentive to stay home and buy it online rather than waiting in line for hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction