I've found that to be more and more the pattern--no one bids till the very end. There are programs available that do it for people, and I think a lot of folks set it up to bid their maximum about 2 seconds before the ending time, in hopes that everyone else will have waited, too. I've been listing things for a variety of 7, 5, and 3 days, and in every case it's the last 5 minutes that count. And listing for longer periods should give more people a chance to see it; indeed, with longer listing times more people seem to "watch" the item, but it doesn't seem to make for higher final bids.