Ebay's policy is an outage of 2 hours or more will
result in the extention of auctions closing for 24 hours. This prevents items which have minimum bids from being sold below par value. Start watching the clock if you think you are going to steal one. The seller can also refuse sale during a system outage by cancelling bids or ending the auction if the seller feels the auction was compromised. Fee refunds can also be awarded to the sellers by ebay. There is little chance of "stealing" an item.

See ebay (topics> ebay policies> Rules for everyone> Outage Policy)

Tom