Our auction has an anti-snipe feature. It's usually set to 120 or 180
minutes but we reserve the right to change it if necessary. The current
setting is displayed on the auction pages and the item/bidding pages.

If we change it its usually to a longer time. Last year we had two
people in a bidding war which went late at night and one of them was on
the east coast, so I set it to extend the auction until morning. Most
other items had closed by then anyway. But it is a fundraiser so we
want to let people bid as high as they are willing to.

The anti-snipe feature extends the auction by that amount of time if
its within that amount of time of posted closing. So if the anti-snipe
is 120 minutes and somebody bids 2 minutes before posted closing then
bidding goes 118 minutes past the scheduled closing. Any more bids
placed at that point extend the closing again. And the previous high
bidder is notified by email that they were outbid.

Jim
CSAC Avalanche Center