I don't belive a player driven auctionhouse with resources and items is a good fit within the game scope.
While you don't have it, you need to establish allied trading routes towards multiple cells in order to manage to get the resources you'd want, generating sea activity regularly in different directions depending on where you are established and what are your needs.
If you were to have it, you would have everyone sailing centralized towards their closest freeport/s, sailing the exact same routes and on top of that being risk-free since freeports have no PvP, which, if anything, would overpopulate freeports, which in turn would make it worse for starting or restarting players. We all remember what happened when there were too many active bodies in freeports.
Do you really need resources that you don't have anywhere close? Do your research. Are they too far? Need help? Explore. Make allies. Trade somewhere in the middle.
I thought that pirates and merchants spent time in the sea during the pirate era, not afk in a safe spot or idling in front of an auctionhouse. What will be next, asking for mailboxes? This isn't wow, fellas. The game is about playing.
It could be cool to have players being able to establish tradeports somewhere in their own claimed areas, to ensure people sailing in/from multiple directions in order to import/export local products and trade with them. Centralized auctionhouses automate things too much and make people lazy.
Player interaction should always prevail over automated systems. There are more than enough active players for that to happen as of now. The game has just seen its launch.
