Auction

What eBay is. Any sale process is fundamentally an auction, in the sense that buyers make various offers and the seller (usually) takes the highest bid. However, the traditional auction - the kind with some guy saying incomprehensible things at a speed reminiscent of a benzedrine-addicted hummingbird, punctuated with occasional gavel bangs - represents the typical selling process amplified by a short-term intensity and a certain competitive edge.
There are various types of auction. There's the live auction, which can include the stereotypical fast-talking auctioneer and people shouting out their bids. It might also resemble the scene from every art heist movie where the auctioneer suggests prices and staid well-dressed people signify their bids by waving paddles in the air.
The live auction, what we think about when we think about an auction, is also sometimes called an English auction.
There's also sealed bid auctions. Here, buyers submit secret bids in sealed envelopes and people don't know the other bids. The highest offer from the sealed bids wins the auction.
Then, of course, there's the online auction, the type made popular by eBay.
Auctions come in highly specialized flavors as well.
There's the Dutch auction, which has the auctioneer start with a very high price and lower it until someone says they are willing to buy it (we're guessing the Dutch don't like to waste time and would rather avoid direct competition).
There's the Japanese auction, which proceeds like a typical auction, but with certain requirements on the bidders. For instance, once things get going, no new bidders can jump in and the action proceeds in rounds, with the bidders either deciding to press on or drop out with each subsequent round. Based on this, we're guessing spelling bees are big in Japan.