eBay sniping

Ebay's auctions are like what I have seen called "silent auctions" I once frequented coin shops that held these auctions, and at friday night at 7pm, they would close the shop for 10 minutes clean of the auction board, and then collect the proceeds. You could consign your stuff, or buy theirs. They had the coins in bags stapled to bid cards. you wrote your # and bid on the back. had to exceed the previous by a percentage. sound familiar? only thing was, sniping went on in person and with some heated arguments. but it just made for a really smelly loud 20 minutes before 7pm, and lots of frantic scribbleing as the auctions ran down. and you could cuss the guy who was bidding on your 1960D proof silver dime. anyway, point being there is no ethical reason to ban sniping. And the format is a monitored silent auction (no auctioneer) so there has to be a way to call the bidding, since the auctioneer is not there to force it to a close. Jim