Twelve is a good number. That’s 12. A dozen. XII.
Not to deprive the OP from unveiling a winner, but here’s the count I came up with
1,1,1,1
2,2
3,3,
4 
5
6,6
7
8
9
10
12
14,14
16
17,17,17
18
19
27
29
34
37
43
57
85
86
1,000,000
I was the last bidder, and being last actually had a downside, in that I thought --based on the number of responses-- that there would probably be close to 80 or 90 bids – instead of 34. So, I went too high. {Actually, there was no way for me to win at the point I voted.)
I should have posted this last night. But I had a long day and I was tired. My thanks to Baal_Houtham for covering for me.
Here’s the results I recorded:
*1 Johnny_Bravo - OldGuy - Omar_Little - That_Don_Guy
*2 DSeid - elfkin477
*3 Ace309 - kayaker
4 Cheesesteak
5 CardboardBoxx
6 Tired_and_Cranky - EyePaintFaces
7 RivkahChaya
8 Czarcasm
9 FastDan1
10 blabbermeister
12 Baal_Houtham
*14 Little Nemo - pjd
16 Dead_Cat
*17 LSLGuy - Pardel-Lux - Pleonast
18 Mean_Mr.Mustard
19 Kimble
27 thorny_locust
29 iamthewalrus_3
34 Half_Man_Half_Wit
37 TriPolar
43 Hari_Seldon
57 I_Love_Me_Vol.I
85 eschrodinger
86 AlsoNamedBort
1000000 Oredigger77
So Cheesesteak is the winner. Congratulations.
One interesting thing I noticed is that it would have been impossible to win this auction by cheating. Let’s say somebody was willing to cheat to win. They could have waited until late yesterday and then read all of the other bids.
But it wouldn’t have allowed them to win. If they bid four, they would just be duplicating Cheesesteak’s bid which would have passed the win on to CardboardBoxx.
This particular auction, more specifically, with this particular set of bids already in place by yesterday, no they couldn’t. But if by miraculous chance no one had bid on 3 up until the last minute, but with 1 and 2 already having multiple takers, then they could bid-snipe and win it in that scenario.
I just thought it was interesting that the situation could arise where cheating was a self-defeating strategy.
I wonder how it would work if you played this out with a group of people who had some information about how the group would bid. I’m imagining a situation where everyone has to put some amount of money into the pot to bid; let’s say twenty dollars.
Then we play out the standard reverse auction as the first round and the person who submitted the lowest unduplicated bid wins half of the money. Pretty much what we did here (only with no actual money involved).
The second round (for the other half of the money) would be a new reverse auction that would follow the same rules. But it would be limited to the people who paid into the first round. So you’d have a group of people who knew what bids everyone in the group had made. Would you try again with the same bid? Adjust your bid based on what won in the first round? Try to figure out how other people would adjust their bids?
Woohoo! It’s the little victories that mean so much.