Speaking of auction strategy and pros/cons of the systems, I wonder if the people who have consigned posters for movies with names starting with letters at the beginning or end of the alphabet have a better or worse chance for getting high bids.
I bring this up because it seems that the EMP auctions start/end alphabetical.
Let's say you have an auction for a poster that starts with an "A" that multiple people want. Since it's one of the first auctions to end that day, the majority of the eligible bidders will have a bunch of "available" funds left. So they might be more generous in their bids. But as the day goes on, and more and more auctions end, the amount of money spent by the pool of bidders will go up and up, resulting in less money available. If bidding wars take place in the earlier auctions, the winner(s) might spend more money then they planned and call it quits for the day. Or some people might get lucky and win a bunch of posters they wanted, not thinking that they would, and run out of money as well. In the end, if those groups all wanted a poster that starts with "Z", that poster might actually sell for significantly less because there will be less people bidding on it.
On the flip side, it could actually work out the other way. If enough people lost out on many of the earlier auctions, and it's coming to the end of the day, they might have an excess amount of funds and be willing to spend more money then they had planned on spending just to get one of the remaining posters. It could even be an extreme case of "I lost out on all the other posters I wanted, this is the last one, and I'll be damned if I lose", resulting in even higher sale prices. Along this thinking, it could possibly hurt the "A" auctions, because people might be reluctant to spend a lot, knowing it's one of the first auctions and there are hundreds more coming.
I'm not sure which scenario is more likely, but I'm sure the above does play a factor (and probably a significant one) in the end prices of many of the auctions.
So, I am curious as to why the auctions are started alphabetically. Wouldn't it make more sense to do it "randomly", to try and equal out the playing field a little bit?