Reading more of it, it looks an awful lot like the business model behind YCH auctions-- Your Character Here. That's a very successful model, and it often results in prices $400+, which is about 2-3x more than what artists often charge otherwise.

That said, YCH is a more traditional auction over a single piece, not a Vickrey auction over a specific supply. According to this model, a Vickrey model would be:

- Scope the work to a specific standard that the artist specifies, in terms of colors, quality, characters, background, etc. That way, the bid is on a roughly equivalent amount of labor per piece.

- People put in (blind) what they're willing to pay

- When demand is exceeded, the nth+1 highest is what everyone pays.

Very fair!

I'd be curious if there'd be a way to price something more custom; for example, putting a price on the number of hours required for each feature (more color or shading, more characters, etc.), how would that affect such a pricing dynamic?

Does such an auction hold under the modification made for multiple participant?

Generally if you intentionally overbid you end up paying the otherwise highest amount discouraging that kind of action (ie you may as well put your max amount).

But if the top 10 pay the price of the 11th bid there’s a perverse incentive for me individually to just say I’m bidding $1 million because I know that most other players are likely to not be smart enough (at least in the short term) to bid strategically and thus I’m guaranteed to get the item at a steeper discount without having to reveal (or bother thinking about) my true max price for the item.

If you do that, there's a real risk you'll end up having to pay more than your max price. Say your max price is $2500, but you bid $1 million. Then it turns out 10 others have a max price of, and bid, $10000. You are now on the hook for $10000, significantly more than your actual max price.