Only the big auction houses, the supermarkets and the wholesalers who supply them will be happy with the move.
But the thing that the big auction houses want above all is a healthy dose of fear in the market.
Is the auction business big enough to support three major auction houses?
Tomoko Namba, founder of DeNA, did not know how big the online auction startup she founded in 1999 would be.
That would make the fund a major player in the classic car marketplace, with the ability to compete against the big classic car auction houses when collections come up for sale.
"This auction is big and robust enough to create all kinds of opportunities, " says Amol Sarva, chief executive of New York City-based mobile start-up, txtbl.
And though neither of the Big Two New York auction houses hold frame sales per se, the scene had become much livelier in London, where, for example, Bonhams now schedules four a year concurrent with auctions of Old Masters paintings.
"Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry "asked for a really big gun, " the auction house said.
The previous big technological innovation in the auction business was the microphone, which allowed the auctioneer to reach the back of larger rooms.
"This would be a big move away from the auction business for eBay and could be a sign of a change in strategy for the company as the telecom industry begins to explode again, " says independent telecom analyst Jeff Kagan.
But going on the auction results, the big money and allocation doesn't reflect exhibition but rather a deadly serious competition between proud and eager franchisees.
But under current EU law only 10% of allocations can be auctioned from 2008 to 2012: one worry here is that a primary auction could let a big buyer corner the market.
His likely successor at NYSE Euronext (nyse: NYX - news - people ), Duncan Niederauer, is a fellow Goldman alum who has expressed disdain for floor brokers--another sign the ever-shrinking auction floor of the Big Board is giving way to NYSE's electronic systems.
With the Auction House feature of Diablo III now live, Donovan said Blizzard can make a big statement if they can keep a big user-base and run the real-money auction house.
Dealers started getting anxious about the November sales season, the next big revenue month for the New York auction houses.
Addressing the Royal Economic Society's conference in Scotland this week, Gordon Brown stressed that spending on debt interest would be lower because of the big receipts from the mobile phone licenses auction.
The internet auction site eBay has reported a big jump in its quarterly profits.
Google will not only bid in the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming 700-megahertz wireless spectrum auction, but it will bid big, and win.
But earlier in the week one of the big providers, SSE, announced plans to auction all of its power on the open market.
Darryl Sterling, an analyst at the Yankee Group, a telecom consulting firm in Boston, expects the December auction to draw some interest from big carriers seeking to fill in gaps in national coverage or lesser ones trying to expand in small markets.
The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge.
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For a start, some local auction houses seem to be wildly exaggerating their sales to big themselves up.
On Friday, the gag order was finally loosened on the big winners in the Federal Communications Commission's 700 megahertz spectrum auction.
Verizon goes into the spectrum auction currently owning the least amount of spectrum of the three big carriers.
Natural history goes to auction five or six times a year in America, and one Sunday last May a big sale took place in Chelsea, at the onetime home of the Dia Center for the Arts.
"It was a pretty big deal--Nick had an eye toward exceptional quality, " says John Petty , who directed the auction for Dallas-based Heritage Comics , a new offshoot of the venerable Heritage Coin.
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