Internet

FOLLOWING the suspension of share trading in Icollector, the firm have announced that they are involved in merger talks.

BUILDING confidence in buying on the Web is an ongoing and lengthy process, but one that can be helped by the efforts of those on the sales side.

The growth of the Internet, and the reluctance of the biggest auctioneers to deal with low-value goods, has helped provincial auctioneers win more business.

THE 300-LOT postal and online comic auction which ended on March 13 was a complete sell-out and saw a top bid of £2540 for a copy of the first Beano Book (or annual) of 1940, which had a rather worn spine but was otherwise designated vg.

THREE Scandinavian auction houses – one each from Denmark, Sweden and Norway – have clubbed together to set up a Web presence that they are billing as “the greatest knowledge of fine art in Northern Europe”.

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.

INVALUABLE have secured a £1m injection of capital from an ethical investment fund to help develop their stolen database services further.

ONLY two weeks ago I featured Antique Networking and their plans for the year. What they could not reveal then but have now is their merger with GoAntiques, allowing them to claim the title “largest online antiques business on the Web”.

AS mentioned in recent issues of the Antiques Trade Gazette, some of the dotcom companies blazing the trail last year have gone very quiet in 2001. But that does not mean that all of them have gone under. In fact, in several cases, it is because they have had their heads down while they develop their businesses further and negotiate new funding deals.

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.

HOPES of clarifying ownership rights over items sold at auction on the Internet have suffered a setback with the settling out of court of a potentially precedent-setting case.

YAHOO have decided to ban sales of Nazi memorabilia and other items promoting racism from their Website from January 10.

IN a week that has seen the NASDAQ plummet and general gloom settle over the dotcom world, the massive Tek Sing cargo sale has shown that the Internet can play an extremely useful role in the international auction scene.

As chairman of a discussion panel at the annual conference of the Appraisers Association of America in New York, MARK BRIDGE, found that the Internet is not the villain it was painted a year ago. He reports on the current attitudes to on-line valuation in the USA and the views of auctioneers experimenting with online bidding.

“Is the live auction dead?” was the challenging question before a panel discussion at the annual conference of the Appraisers Association of America in New York in which four major regional auction houses took part.

FRANCE: A French judge ruled on November 20 that Yahoo must take steps to prevent French Web-browsers from accessing sales of Nazi memorabilia on their American auction site.

A trio of international experts appointed by a Paris court have concluded that it may be technically possible to prevent Web browsers from consulting sites based in another country, but that the method envisaged is not fully reliable.

UK: ANTIQUES Portfolio, the dotcom company which had tied in its future with the now defunct Gavelnet, has itself filed for insolvency

UK: ART & Antiques on the Internet is the title of a one-day conference being staged at the Royal Institution on Thursday October 26 by the Institute of Art and Law and the RICS

IT WILL simplify sales say Sotheby’s. Within the next month Sotheby’s will be merging their two online ventures, sothebys.com and sothebys.amazon.com under the sothebys.com banner.