The bidding on Barry Bonds 700th homerun baseball was up to $812,171 on the Overstock Auctions site Sunday evening with several days left to go.

The auction was posted on October 18 by Steven Williams, with a starting bid of $1 with no minimum price. Williams is a life-long San Francisco Giants' fan and 26-year-old mortgage broker assistant from Pacifica, California who recovered the ball at SBC Park on September 17.

Williams scheduled the auction to close on Wednesday, October 27 at noon Mountain time. However, unlike some online auction sites, Overstock Auctions does not allow "sniping," the controversial method of bidding to win an auction in the last few seconds before it closes. Overstock Auctions employs a soft-close auctioning process, whereby the auction will automatically extend 10 minutes if a bid is made within the last 10 minutes of the auction closing. This extension process repeats itself as long as new bids continue to come in.

"Obviously, this is a huge win for us," said Holly MacDonald-Korth, vice president of Overstock Auctions. "We just launched our auction business three weeks ago. Sellers like Steven with such high-profile auctions lend credibility to what we offer."

http://auctions.overstock.com