This is not a bug. Instead it is a request for guidance or perhaps a feature request.

Here is the scenario:
I have a non-profit organization that promotes events for fund rising purposes. They hold auctions at the event. They would like to start the bidding online 1 week prior to the event. They would like the bidding to continue offline at the event.

My problem is how do I freeze the online bidding without deleting the item from the database. Assigning a long expiration would allow online visitors to continue bidding online during the event auction and potentially cause bidding conflicts. I would like to freeze the bids the day before the event, and continue the auction offline at the event. The starting bid for each item at the event, would be the highest online bid.

Once the event auction is completed, then all items(nodes) can be deleted from the database.

Any suggestions how to develop such a feature without hacking the current code? or I would put together a formal requirement document if anyone is interested in taking this as a project.

Thanks in advance for your comments,

Sandro.