Banu Auctions are different than what you may expect from a typical auction.
Standard human auctions, from the distant past, have had an auctioneer, someone to start the bidding and keep it going, and a starting price, given by the auctioneer.
The auctioneer gives a price that someone agrees to pay, and the auctioneer then raises that price. If no one agree to the new price, the item is sold to the one who agreed to the last price.
The positive and negative of this is that an item may be auctioned at a price far below its value. Positive for the buyer, negative for the seller, who only gets a fraction of the value.
The Banu, when they first heard of this method of auctioning, did that shaky thing that passes for a laugh for them. They couldn’t believe that any seasoned merchant would take a risk that a product might sell at a price that would return a loss.
The Banu auction allows for the buyer to pay a very low auction price, and still give the seller a profit. For the Banu, this is the best type of deal. The buyer pays far less than retail for an item, and the seller gets a nice profit. Both parties win, and that is good for business.
Just The Facts
The Banu can be honest to a fault. Every fact and condition is always in the contract. The Banu auction requires those wishing to participate, to buy bid tokens. By purchasing the bid tokens, you are signing a contract that you will abide by all the rules of the auction.
You purchase your tokens at a set price. Each token allows you to place a bid, which raises the eventual purchase price by one hundredth of a Credit (or whatever currency is being used). Unlike the traditional human auction, the starting price for every auction is always 0.00, and stays that way until someone bids on the item.
Each auction is timed, unlike a traditional auction. The countdown timer usually starts at three hours, and begins to count backward to zero. As bids are placed, a few seconds are added to the clock for each bid placed. This adds a sense of excitement and urgency to the bidding. It also adds time to the auction. A fiercely contested auction can go hours beyond the posted end time.
The heaviest bidding always occurs within a few seconds of the auction closing. The clock will drop to say, two seconds, a bid is placed, and the clock is reset to twelve seconds. It counts down to a few seconds, and another bid is placed, adding another few seconds.
Hotly contested auctions will draw crowds of onlookers, to see how close to zero, the bidders will get before placing a bid. There can be a lot of strategy, when more than two bidders are active, and it can be an incredibly exciting thing to watch.
Be sure to read Winning Banu Auctions, before you start bidding. That document will give you invaluable information for learning how the auctions work.