It's possible that extending the auction end time whenever a bid is placed could help.
Means that nobody can jump in at the last second, and theres a chance that it will get extended to EU time.
10 PM EST is around 2 AM GMT. As most countries are a bit ahead, it'd be 3-5 AM GMT.
If it gets extended by a couple of hours by interested bidders, EU people would have a chance to put in a bid as they wake up.
The silent bidding that you suggest too could be done by just PMing the person running the auction, who could then post the bids on their behalf.
If necessary, a signed message from the bidder could be given to the auctioneer, with the max amount so that the auctioneer could prove that he had authorization to make bids on the bidders behalf.
Possibly could ask that the address should have atleast the maximum bid amount available.
i like this suggestion; bids could be made by providing a signed message from an address containing funds, and a message stating the bid for the item. the seller could, in turn, provide occasional updates by posting in the thread about the current highest bid. its a neat idea, but i see no benefit of using a silent auction over what is done now.
as far as problems go, it would be up to the seller to provide constant updates on the price and manage the flood of messages into their inbox. without a platform to manage bids like ebay, i think doing it on the forum would be a bad idea solely for this reason, and it will likely be an issue with popular items.
