Consider the following auction concept. I call it a "SUNK COST AUCTION" Each person bids, but you pay all of the money that you bid for every bid you make. So, if you bid \$1 that \$1 is gone, even if you are out-bid by someone bidding \2. The last person to bid (the highest bid) gets the item.
There is an item that you value at \100 up for auction.
You are in the room with 100 people who also want the item and who value it too but you don't know how much they value it. You can safely assume, though, that the level they value it is normally distributed around some well-known value that is not too different from your own evaluation. (Maybe, that well-known value is \120.)
Bidding starts at \10, the person who bids \10 WILL (probably) NOT WIN obviously so it's just lost money... but if no one bids except that one person ... well then they do win. So early bidding is low-risk, high reward.
The time limit for bidding re-sets after each bid. So, you take \10 at the last moment... but then there is another 1 min added where you can be outbid.
How would such an auction go down? No one wants to bid until the price is high enough that they have a shot at being "last" ... but, there's always the slim chance that no one will take the risk and you could win a \$100 for only \$10.
Also, as the price rises biding becomes very risky. It would be awful to bid \$100 only to have someone else take it for \$120.