All,
I'm really sorry to have to do this to the people who have been legitimately saving money, sometimes for months and months on end, but for now I am going to cancel the auction. I was going to let it depend on player votes, which were at 78/81 in favor of cancelling the auction around the time it ended.
The loophole/bug has been reported to Flash, who depending on RL availability is usually pretty good with responding to bugs. I'll be continuing to see if I can patch it before he gets to it. If/when it is fixed, I will be running another auction - it makes no sense to punish players who legitimately gather gold by not holding them once this is fixed and all that excess gold has to leave the game somehow.
Perhaps given the amounts that have been posted as bids, some of you can use the time to save some more.
Ely