Patent ID: 7870055

Claim:
A method of operating an electronic auction system, the method including: auctioning a first item based on a first auction format; auctioning a lot of new items based on a second auction format; and receiving, at the electronic auction system, bids for the first item and bids for one or more items of the lot of new items, the auctioning of the first item based on the first auction format d including automatically awarding the first item based on a high bid of one or more of the bids for the first item, and the auctioning of the lot of new items based on the second auction format including, using one or more processors, accessing an electronic auction database to obtain a posted minimum selling price for the one or more items, comparing the posted minimum selling price to a first bid of the bids for the one or more items, reserving the first bid in an electronic bid database operatively coupled to the electronic auction system based on the first bid not meeting the posted minimum selling price, the reserved first bid for the one or more items to be considered as a further bid for a further one or more items of the lot of new items, for sale at an adjusted minimum selling price, automatically awarding the one or more items based on a second bid at least meeting the posted minimum selling price, accessing the electronic auction database to obtain a desired sales volume associated with the lot of new items, determining an actual sales volume associated with the lot of new items using a number of the awarded one or more items, automatically adjusting the posted minimum selling price to calculate the adjusted minimum selling price for the further one or more items based on a result of comparing the desired sales volume with the actual sales volume, and providing instructions to update a merchandise catalog page with the adjusted minimum selling price for the further one or more items.