The original post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1863923

I got following info from a person managing the auction about how the auction works and thought I would post it here in case someone is interested:

"When you purchase tickets for the auction (either at the auction, or in advance at the Bing Nursery School office), you will get a bidder package that contains stickers with your registration barcode on them. You will place a sticker on the bid sheet of each item you wish to bid on, at the dollar amount you wish to bid at. There will be a bid sheet for each item, and bidders are able to bid, outbid, and bid again until the bidding reaches a dollar amount that nobody wants to exceed, or until the bidding closes on that section. since you are interested in a particular item, it should be fairly easy for you to see whether or not you have won the bidding. If I didn't explain it well here, I think it will make sense to you when you see the set-up."