Internet

OVER the weekend of May 15-16, the Annapolis (Maryland) doll specialists, Theriault’s, sold $3m worth of dolls and automata in a Las Vegas sale that for the first time introduced live Internet bidding.

LAW firm Withers, who specialise in advising the art and antiques trade, say new .eu domains coming in this year should be registered quickly to boost and defend business.

LIVEAUCTIONEERS.COM, the Manhattan-based company that provides real-time Internet bidding capability to many US auction houses, has signed an agreement with Sotheby’s New York branch to provide its services for selected Sotheby’s sales.

The antiques trade are being alerted to a new online fraud after at least three dealers were targeted last week. Overpayment fraud, as it is known, is the latest in a series of Internet-based payment frauds aimed at retailers with a website presence.

Amazon are to compete for a share of the thriving online trade in antiquarian and secondhand books, having acquired rights to use the British Library’s bibliographic catalogue as a searchable database.

A NEW company aiming to capture a market that even the top firms have failed to corner – selling high end art and antiques online – are trying a fresh approach. iGavel are headed by Vancouver-based Lark E. Mason, Jr, a 24-year veteran employee of Sotheby’s whose last role was director of online auctions for sothebys.com.

THE United States has taken a lead in art restitution by setting up a website to track Nazi-looted art. The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal which has just gone online, will provide a database of museums collections – 70 have signed up so far – for checks on art that disappeared in Europe between 1933 and 1945.

As part of the on-going development of the Gazette website, antiquestradegazette.com is now asking users to log in when using the site. Access to the site and all its services from Lot Find to Price Guide remains free of charge.

The second birthday of the Gazette’s web site (it was officially launched in May 2001) saw its usage rise to new heights with over 2 million hits and nearly 300,000 pages viewed in a single week.

THANKS to intense internicine competition between major London dealers such as Richard Green and David Mason in recent years, the once-maligned name of Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1839) has become a byword for high prices at UK art sales.

AFTER what seems an unending number of complaints about unscrupulous online fair guides charging for unwanted advertising, the Antiques Trade Gazette has now heard about what appears to be a new scam.

Sotheby’s have dramatically scaled back their ambitious but costly Internet operation, announcing an end to all separate online auctions by early May.

ONLINE antiques and collectables mall GoAntiques.com have filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States.

THE Office of Fair Trading are investigating the activities of a London-based listings firm whose mailshots to the trade have sparked complaints.

For all those fans who ever longed to run their fingers through Elvis Presley’s hair, now there’s a chance. While locks or strands of Elvis’ boot-polished black hair have been sold in the past, one of more than 1400 memorabilia lots in a sale closing on November 14-15 on www.mastronet.com is something just a bit special.

The bane of the shop trade and the boon of auctioneers – the Internet has certainly transformed the marketplace and nowhere is this more true than toy sales.

THE Internet may well be gathering momentum as an effective marketing and selling tool for Herefordshire auctioneers Brightwells who now illustrate about a quarter of the catalogue entries on their website launched in February.

antiquestradegazette.com has received 1 million hits in a single week for the first time. The growth in site traffic to 1,200,000 hits in the week ending 8th September represents a significant jump over the previous week, which saw 848,000 hits.

ST James’s art dealer Peter Nahum is behind a website just launched specifically with the art and antiques trade in mind. Called Penseroso, it has taken Mr Nahum and his team three years to develop and although there are already website systems aimed at the trade he feels none has fully understood the specialist needs of a dealer.

THE State of Illinois is on the verge of introducing a new law to tackle Internet fraud that could lead the way for legislation elsewhere in the US and across the world.