The only change I would suggest to an auction would be to stagger the end times. My understanding was that the reason that that had not been done this time around was to cut down on people swooping in at the last second to make a final bid so close to the deadline that they couldn't be outbid. It turned out that everyone was well behaved here and that didn't happen for any auctions. I think that by staggering the end times, people could plan better how they wished to allocate their money and this would result in higher final bids overall.
I suggested having a subsequent auction in three months so that if someone is on a tight budget but wished to participate, they would have some time to build up their discretionary funds.
Joy,
Lynn
