Correction — 19 September 2026: The original article said this snapshot ruled out late bidding. It does not. We compared different auctions at one point in time, not the same auctions through to completion. We have removed that conclusion and corrected the explanation of bid counts. The original snapshot figures below are retained; this is not a new capture or a completed-sales study.
A consignor asks whether to auction an item rather than list it at a fixed price. It is a reasonable question. An auction has a deadline, and a deadline creates urgency that a Buy It Now listing does not.
The usual answer is that auctions suit items whose value is uncertain, because competing bidders discover the price for you.
That answer assumes competing bidders exist. We wanted to know whether they do.
What we counted
On 12 September 2026 we sampled 4,989 distinct live auction listings in eBay Australia’s Men’s Athletic Shoes category, and recorded the bid count and closing time of each.
4,455 of them — 89% — carried no bid at all.
That describes the moment of capture. It does not mean 89% went unsold. The sample also does not establish the result for all Australian sneaker auctions or other categories.
What the time-to-close groups show
Auction bidding is widely understood to concentrate in the closing minutes. If that is what is happening, a mid-run auction showing no bids has not failed; it simply has not finished.
So we grouped the same listings by how long they had left.
| Time to close at capture | Listings | No bids at capture | Median bids where any | Median displayed price where any |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 hour | 112 | 93% | 2 | $32 |
| 1–6 hours | 935 | 92% | 1 | $40 |
| 6–24 hours | 900 | 88% | 2 | $56 |
| 1–3 days | 764 | 84% | 1 | $45 |
| 3 days or more | 2,278 | 89% | 1 | $27 |
The no-bid share was higher in the under-one-hour group than in the three-days-or-more group. These are different listings, however, and the remaining hour still contains the final seconds in which a bid could arrive. We did not revisit the listings at closing.
Starting price, item appeal, condition, seller, auction duration and ending time can differ between groups. The table cannot isolate the effect of time or rule out late bidding. The displayed prices are live values, not final selling prices or retained proceeds.
A bid count is not a final result
Among listings that had attracted any bid, the median was one.
A bid count alone does not tell us the number of distinct bidders, their maximum bids or the final price. eBay uses automatic bidding up to a buyer’s maximum, so two recorded bids do not reliably mean one increment above the opening price. See eBay’s explanation of automatic bidding .
The group medians for displayed prices ranged from $27 to $56 among listings with bids. A median does not describe the full price distribution, and these figures cannot tell us where all of the category’s bidding activity or final sales value sits.
What this means for a listing decision
The practical question is whether you would accept the opening price if competition is limited. An opening price is a minimum bid, not a promise that an item will attract a buyer or that a completed sale will be retained.
Do not set a low starting price on the assumption that other bidders will lift it. eBay Australia says reserve prices are available only in Vehicle categories; a sneaker seller cannot rely on a separate reserve to protect a low opening bid. Check eBay Australia’s reserve-price rules .
Compare recent completed sales for the same model, size, condition and inclusions. Consider your acceptable return, fees, postage and the time you can leave the item listed. A fixed price gives you control of the asking amount; an auction sets a closing time. Neither guarantees a sale. This snapshot does not establish which format produces better outcomes.
Our eBay listing checklist and Australian eBay fee calculator can help structure that review.
Limits of this measurement
These are live listings, not completed ones. We did not observe how any of them ended, and we cannot infer a final no-sale rate from the no-bid share at capture.
It is one snapshot, taken at a single moment on one day. It is one category on one marketplace, and sneakers are not representative of everything a store sells.
Auction durations vary between one and ten days, so time-to-close is not a clean measure of how long a listing has been running. A one-day auction an hour from closing has been live for 23 hours; a ten-day auction three days out has been live for a week. The groups in that table are not matched cohorts.
The article does not document the capture query, pagination, selection coverage or a currency-normalisation check. Treat the original counts and displayed-price summaries as a reported snapshot, not an independently reproducible market benchmark. Bid history, completed outcomes, payments, cancellations, refunds and a comparable fixed-price sample were not followed up here.
The supported observation is narrow: most listings in this sample had no bids when captured. We do not know how they finished or whether fixed price would have performed better.
Why we looked
We were asked whether to auction a pair of designer sneakers rather than list them at a fixed price. The answer mattered because the downside was large and asymmetric.
Knowing which format to use requires evidence about comparable completed outcomes and your own selling constraints. We run Still In The Box AU and are building TurnGoods around those decisions. This market snapshot is separate from our store’s sales evidence and does not establish a benefit from using TurnGoods.
If you would like to discuss a small listing review , we will agree scope, data handling, turnaround and any fee first. You retain control of your listings.