I attended a silent auction in Texas several years ago and it was an amazing thing to watch. The owner of the calves had about 30-40 calves ( of all shapes and sizes .. and of several variations of quality). He split them into pens of approx 8 head and put a base price on each pen. For example, Pen 1 may have had a base price of $800, Pen 2 a base price of $1000 and etc . The best calves as the owner saw them) had a base price of $2000. He had a bid box on each pen. If you were interested in a calf in a pen, you wrote the tag number and your name and address on the card and put it in the box. At 3 pm, the bids were closed and each bid box was opened. If only one person had bid on any calf in that pen, they purchased that calf at the base price. If there was more than one bidder on any price, a small auction was held between only the people who had placed a bid in the box, for that particular calf. It took about an hour before all the calves were dealt with. When it was all over the top steer brought $8000 and I found it interesting that he did not come out of the group with the highest base price. He came out of a pen with the 3rd highest bid price. Three different families had bid on the steer so the bidding was held between only them. One bowed out of the bidding fairly quickly, but the other two, butted heads for awhile. Only 1 calf did not sell. The calves averaged just short of $2000.