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I feel like I'm missing something: how does this approach speed up calls?

You're still going to want some period of time between the last bid and the "sold" call. (Time often consumed by an auctioneer saying "going once... going twice...".)

Did you reduce that time? Do the other interim calls somehow increase the pace of bidding? What's happening between the last bid and the "sold" call, other than people staring at a timer counting down?

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It's just saying that each "section" has a bid timer that resets each time a bid is made.

Some auction sites have this already (you bid on something, the time until auction end goes up a minute) to counteract sniping.

Sniping isn’t a bad thing though, it’s the poorly educated bidders that lead to anti-sniping rules. I’d wager 75% of EBay bidders don’t understand how the proxy bidding works there. Ideally you should put in your maximum price when you place a bid and then let the auction run its course.

It's kind of fun to watch attempted sniping happen when they don't out-snipe my proxy bid. I use other auction sites that don't do proxy bidding and you basically have to either snipe or overpay if there's any competition for the auction.

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