eBay Live Auctions 

Important: eBay retired Live Auctions at the end of 2008. (This did not affect auction-style listings on eBay. This change only affected listings on the ebayliveauctions.com site.)

Live Auction Format Being Retired End of 2008

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200804151300402.html

All eBay Live Auction calls and fields will be removed from the latest schema by the end of 2008, and this section of the documentation will be updated with more details by that time.

Note: The remainder of this chapter is intended to help you identify features you will need to remove in your application if you are currently using eBay Live Auctions.

The eBay Live Auctions site lets users bid real-time on live auctions happening on the floor of some of the world's greatest auction houses. Potential buyers place absentee bids, bid against the floor, or just watch the auction using the convenience of the Internet.

On the eBay Live Auctions site, you will find lots (Live Auctions equivalent of items) that will be auctioned in upcoming sales by our auction house partners. Each sale has a catalog that features all the lots to be offered in a particular live auction event.

Sellers create live auction catalogs and schedule their live auction events by using the eBay Live Auctions Web site user interface. The seller can create a catalog in the Live Auctions system several months before a sale.

A live auction catalog can contain up to five (5) sale schedules. Each schedule defines the start and end time of a live auction event. A schedule must be created at least 48 hours in advance of the auction. The seller then lists one or more lots that will be auctioned during that event.

With the API, the process you use to list a lot is very similar to the process you use to list a regular item (see Listing an Item). However, instead of using AddItem, you use AddLiveAuctionItem to add one lot to a schedule (see AddLiveAuctionItem). Similarly, to revise a lot, use ReviseLiveAuctionItem (see ReviseLiveAuctionItem).

Please note that you cannot create or modify live auction catalogs and schedules or modify the start and end times of a schedule through the API.

See the eBay Live Auctions Web site for more details about how Live Auctions work:

eBay Live Auctions

http://www.ebayliveauctions.com

How Live Auctions Work

http://pages.ebay.com/liveauctions/help/welcome/how_works.html

Live Auctions Terminology

http://pages.ebay.com/liveauctions/help/welcome/terminology.html

When a seller creates a catalog, eBay Live Auctions assigns it a numeric ID. eBay Live Auctions also assigns a numeric ID to each schedule that the seller creates within that catalog. Use GetLiveAuctionCatalogDetails to retrieve the seller's current catalogs and schedules (see GetLiveAuctionCatalogDetails).

This chapter covers these topics:

Listing Lots to the eBay Live Auctions Site

Managing Listed Lots

Testing Live Auctions

User-Contributed Notes