I'd never actually played with auctions (had no idea they were in the rules, which I'd learned from friends/relatives and not from reading the rulebook) until I

I'd never actually played with auctions (had no idea they were in the rules, which I'd learned from friends/relatives and not from reading the rulebook) until I played the video game version for NES (years after it came out), which also happens to be the least-hellish way to play the game that I've experienced, I think because it handles running auctions and the nuts-and-bolts of keeping track of mortgages and crap like that that's so tedious in the real game.