The auctioneer (which can be found at least in Arelium) seemed to me as superb
alternative/add to sales and broker. There is unfortunately some issues that
probably explain why the usage is not yet more widespread (read: no-one uses
it):

The most severe one is that, there seems to be a nasty bug / feature that
makes the items jump in list which can lead to wrongly placed bids. The
auctioneer lets you see sdesc and ldesc of the item, and seller can add 5
lines of text to explain the item, BUT: buyer does not see the name of seller,
or what is the max cond or what names are on the item etc.

To go to the point, I think few tweaks would make auctioneer much more
desirable solution for selling stuffs:
1. fix the bug/feature that reorders list when one places a bid
2. make the name of seller visible to the buyer. remove longdesc from "view
<item>" and give broker style info for the item.
3. let seller pay for id when adding the item, just like in broker AND let
buyer pay for id if they want to check whether the information given is
correct
4. make it possible to add shares for items, so that when item is sold, the
price is divided according to shares. parties could just add stuff for sale
and no-one would have to do the work for handling payments etc. auctioneer
could charge service costs for handling shares
5. seller should have some sort of view of the items they are selling that
would also show the time left for each item. if time runs out, seller could
buy more selling time.
6. minimum raise should be based on the current bid, so item would get
proper bids, and not just +1k bid when current bid is 1M. maybe minimum could
be something like +10% of the current bid or so.

the list could go on, but I think these changes would make the auction a
proper marketplace.

Yours truly, Ecky