n. (1) An auction having several of the same item up for bid at once, with a minimum bid. Bidding starts with people offering a fixed price at or above the minimum for a certain number of, or all of, the items available. Highest offered price wins, regardless of how many items were bid on by that bidder, and winners then descend by final offered price.
A feature unique to this style of auction is that, if a lower-bidding
participant bid for x items, but due to higher-bidding winners could only buy fewer than x, he has the right to back out and purchase none at all.
(2) a form of auction similar to the above, once but no longer held on eBay, in which the same rules were
generally followed, with rules for bid times and final winning prices
calculated slightly differently.