For a limited time, Valve has opened the doors to a new feature on Steam. Starting today, you can begin placing bids on games and a few items at the newly opened Steam Holiday Auction. This new program allows you to convert your unused and unwanted Steam inventory items into cold, hard... virtual gems. Those gems can then be used to "bid" on an item, usually a game on Steam. If you have the high bid at the end of a 45 minute timer, you win the auction!

Think of this as eBay but with Steam games and gems. Meaning, it would be in your best interest to hold off on placing a high bid until the last possible second on an auction. Placing a high bid early only drives up the price for when someone inevitably outbids you. Let's just say that you'll probably have to be incredibly lucky or incredibly persistent if you plan on getting any of the hottest games for 2014.
Recycle Steam Community items like Trading Cards, backgrounds, and emoticons from your Inventory into Gems and use it to bid on games up for auction. The first auction round ends on Dec 15 @ 10:45am with a new round ending every 45 minutes until the last auction round ends on Dec 18 @ 1:00pm. At the end of each auction round, the top bidder for each title wins.

Pro tip: Need more items to turn into Gems? More than 1,200 games on Steam drop Trading Cards just for playing them. Find out which of your games has drops remaining on your Badges page. Also, don’t forget to craft the Trading Cards into badges, the resulting emoticons and backgrounds have a higher Gem value. If you have nothing in your Inventory to recycle, you can also trade for Gems or purchase them on the Community Market.

The Auction runs Dec 15 @ 10:45am to Dec 18 @ 1:00pm when the Holiday Sale begins.

Yes, the auctions are already up but the first batch of "winners" won't be selected until December 15 at 7:45AM (PT). It will then cycle through auctions every 45 minutes until December 18 at 10AM (PT). At that point, the Steam Holiday Sale 2014 will begin. And here you were thinking your wallets would get a reprieve. How adorable!

You can see the auctions, an FAQ, and even a comic for this new Holiday Auction over at the Steam Auction website.