Personally I think it would be interesting to see a real auction setup in the game with maybe a sort of "Buy it now" option so that people who don't want to wait or don't like the concept could still have the option of just selling items.
But that would also probably drastically change the economy in the game and not sure how it would impact new players (if prices went so high new players were unable to buy anything, at least they could make a killing selling).
If there are already items up for sale, auctions function as a sort of 'reverse auction', with the seller bidding for customers rather than the customers bidding on items. When I action off items I don't particularly need due to where i'm at in the game, I set my price just below the prevailing price in the existing auctions. Thus, *I* am bidding against *other* sellers for the attention of customers.
Except I don't suppose that's what the devs meant when they named it auctions, but whatever.