Let’s say you’re in the market for 1000 carats of unfinished Burmese rubies, or a timeshare villa at Disney World, or maybe a used epoxy dispensing machine once owned by Fermi Lab. You notice the reasonable current bid and the ending date, gear up your sniping software and prepare to make a killing. Your bid is made 11 seconds before the auction’s announced end, but what’s this? With the placing of your bid, the auction has been extended by five minutes. You scan the auction description thoroughly, and there it is, “Overtime Period: 5 min.”

Overtime period?

You’re at Bid4Assets.com, an online auction site that now boasts about its snipe-free auction environment. Auctions on Bid4Assets have no artificial stop time and more closely resemble a live auction where sniping can’t exist. Just as in the live auction world, where the lot isn’t sold until the auctioneer’s gavel closes the bidding, Bid4Assets automatically extends the bidding time of an auction whenever a bid is placed during the last few minutes of the scheduled close. This continues until five minutes have passed without any bidding activity.

“Most of our auctions go into overtime allowing every serious buyer the same opportunity to win. We’re getting our sellers more money and continue to have very satisfied buyers,” said Mark Wheeler, the director of information technology at Bid4Assets. The company claims it’s where serious buyers and sellers meet for a real auction, not just the thrill of the kill. Both buyer and seller win: the seller earns more money and the buyer experiences the excitement of winning instead of the frustration of being sniped.

Bid4Assets began as a venue for bankrupt dot-coms to liquidate holdings. It now concentrates on auction services for government and private industry by providing customized solutions such as online, traditional and webcast auctions. Their focus is on high-end assets, selling real estate, personal property, bankruptcy claims and other types of property to a worldwide network of buyers. Visit them at http://www.bid4assets.com.