What I am missing here is what is lost in having the exact same auction, but with a $3,000 opening bid and a $3,750 buy it now.
Anyone who was never going to pay $3,000 won't bid, but were they REALLY going to get "auction fever" after a bunch of "reserve not met" bids and then change their mind? And THIS way, anyone thinking of buying it has to weigh up whether they want to wait through the entire auction to "save" $750, or just pay the $3,750 and have it for sure (the same dynamic is not there with "reserve not met", because they don't know what the reserve is).
I KNOW this is not what Schan is doing or would do, but there were several major eBay sellers who would do these kinds of auctions, and then have a buddy enter a bid of $2,900 (one bid under the reserve), so that if anyone DID get sucked in to bidding after they were "outbid" they might well end up bidding $3,000, and think "Well there was that other guy who would have paid $2,900".