The top sites for Shopping - Auctions Stamps & Philately.
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder. In economic theory, an auction may refer to any mechanism or set of trading rules for exchange.
There are several variations on the basic auction form, including time limits, minimum or maximum limits on bid prices, and special rules for determining the winning bidder(s) and sale price(s). Participants in an auction may or may not know the identities or actions of other participants. Depending on the auction, bidders may participate in person or remotely through a variety of means, including telephone and the internet. The seller usually pays a commission to the auctioneer or auction company based on a percentage of the final sale price.
The development of the internet, however, has led to a significant rise in the use of auctions as auctioneers can solicit bids via the internet from a wide range of buyers in a much wider range of commodities than was previously practical.[5]
In 2008, the US National Auctioneers Association reported that the gross revenue of the auction industry for that year was approximately $268.4 billion, with the fastest growing sectors being agricultural, machinery, and equipment auctions and residential real estate auctions. These figures do not take into account auctions taking place throughout the rest of the world where the internet and auctions held on them are a more recent phenomenon.
The internet has a wide array of auction types available for user participation, the most popular are open ascending price auctions. In recent years all pay auctions in which all bidders must pay their bids regardless of whether they win have become popular. This is because the winner may eventually pay a very small nominal price to acquire an item. This outcome masks the fact that the sum of all bids may be well in excess of the item’s market value.
The focus of this webspace is SHOPPING AUCTIONS ONLINE – STAMPS & PHILATELY
. The websites are the best of the highest trafficked sites on the web.

SOURCE: Adapted from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction