Organisations

IT APPEARS that simple economics may be catching up with eBay sellers, at least in the antiques and collectibles sector. Everyone knows the law of supply and demand: if supply is low and demand high, prices go up. If supply is high and demand doesn’t increase accordingly, prices go down.

A pair of early Levi’s jeans dragged from the mud of a Nevada mining town were worth far more than their weight in gold when sold through eBay on May 25.

A number of dealers have contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette concerning a couple passing false cheques in antique shops across Dorset, Devon, Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

THE Society of Fine Art Auctioneers celebrated its silver jubilee at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in Knightsbridge last week, with chairman Chris Ewbank announcing a surge in membership.

SALES to overseas buyers now account for 63 per cent of business among members of the British Antique Dealers Association, according to BADA’s latest survey for 1999/2000.

BRITISH Art Market Federation chairman Anthony Browne has appealed to the Government to continue the fight to protect domestic trade interests from the worst aspects of droit de suite.

Internet auction giant EBay Inc. is to follow Yahoo in banning the sale of artefacts from Nazi Germany, in the hope of avoiding legal problems in other countries.

LAPADA, the Association of Art and Antique Dealers, have set out a three-point plan to help the trade meet the demands of the Kent Bill. They also plan to use the scheme to monitor possible legislation elsewhere across the country.

LAST year’s BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair was by consensus considered not just the best looking of the association’s ventures so far but it was also, by quite a distance, the most profitable to date for the exhibitors.

THREE men have been charged with joining together to drive up prices for items they were selling on Internet auctions on EBay. The charges include one linked to a sale in which a Dutch user bid $135,000 for a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting.

US: JUST as it was with the Morris bird books featured in last week’s Antiquarian Books pages (see issue no. 1481), we are looking here at a very familiar set of books in an unfamiliar context.

ICOLLECTOR seem to be on a roll with their new eBay deal. After a good start, they have put in another creditable performance, this time at the recent Dargate Galleries sale of general antiques and collectables, reported in detail below.

UK: The National Arts Collection Fund has announced that it is to oversee the bequest of 250 works from the studio of the visionary painter Cecil Collins (1908-89) to about 50 galleries and museums across the country.

CRITICISM of this column that it deals with auction results as opposed to private treaty deals is perhaps justified. The difficulty is that one is not privy to private treaty details and nor should we be.

WITH no pre-sale marketing other than a two-day notice on their own Website, ICollector’s first online sale with EBay saw the service get off to a good start.

A LAWSUIT that threatened to deal a fatal blow to the heart of EBay’s trading status has been dismissed by a Californian court

A WEEK after ICollector announced a major online bidding deal with EBay, TIAS, the Houston-based Web mall claiming the largest “fixed price” source of antiques and collectables on the Internet, have withdrawn from a similar arrangement.

EBay are to provide the technology for customers to bid live online at sales held by hundreds of auction houses whose catalogues can be scanned on ICollector’s Website.

THE British Art Market Federation has expressed disappointment as the European Parliament is seeking to reverse special provisions for the UK concerning droit de suite, the artists’ resale levy.

FRANCE: A Paris court has granted a temporary injunction placing a Cézanne painting currently on show at a city museum under legal supervision pending an inquiry into its ownership.