Internet

FRANCE: FRENCH online auction information company Artprice.com became the first dot.com business to hit the Nouveau Marché Paris on Friday January 21. Its stock was placed at Fr125 (£11.67) per share and the 1.15m shares on offer represent 18.4 per cent of the company capital.

SOTHEBY'S are counting on their brand value and guarantees of quality to help them sell high value art and antiques on the sothebys.com website which went online on January 11.

SOTHEBY'S are counting on being able to woo a whole new generation of young millionaires into buying art and antiques online at sothebys.com, their new Internet auction service. It launched last week with about half the 5000 lots drawn from Sotheby's vendors and half from 400 associate dealers.

LAUNCHED this week on the internet Worldbookdealers.com is a new concept in buying rare books and has the backing of many of the world’s top antiquarian booksellers.

CHRISTIE'S International has had a radical rethink of its Internet strategy, disbanding its Internet Auctions division, which it created in May as a separate entity, and shelving plans to sell online.

UK: HUGH Scully, Antiques Roadshow presenter since 1981, has signed a five-year deal with internet auction house QXL.com, worth £3m.

GERMANY: THE German Society of Auctioneers, Der Bundesverband Deutscher Kunstversteigerer is mounting a legal challenge to prevent Internet auction firms from advertising their sales in Germany as public auctions or sales.

UK & US: A NEW Internet auction house, due to launch simultaneously in the United States and the UK on October 15, aims to woo dealers in high value art and antiques by special incentives and simplifying the process.

GERMANY: ARTLINK have conducted what is being claimed as the first live online art auction. The sale – of International Young Baltic Art – took place on the evening of Saturday, August 7 at Rostock in Germany.

GERMANY: INTERNET art auctioneer Artnet.com which floated on the Frankfurt exchange in May, have denied a claim by magazine Boerse Online that their main shareholders are selling their shares.

THE race for auction supremacy on the Internet took yet another turn last week when Sotheby’s announced a long term alliance with the best known name in e-commerce, amazon.com.

GERMANY: IN another fortnight of rapid developments in e-commerce, Artnet.com, specialist fine art service provider on the Internet, went public on May 17 when it offered shares in its parent company, artnet.com AG, on Frankfurt’s Neuer Markt stock exchange.

UK: PRIVATE collectors, museums, dealers and exhibitions are the target audience for a new art insurance programme launched on the Internet.

THE INTERNET bookseller Amazon.com recently launched an online auction service for their customers in obvious emulation of the phenomenally successful ebay person-to-person auction community.

UK: DURING the past few weeks rumours have been circulating among British dealers, Internet specialists and the art press that the British trade associations have been in talks with San José-based online auction giant ebay with a view to establishing a Web-site for the international art trade.

UK: MORE than 13,500 archaeological items were found and recorded in the first year of a Government scheme to register historical finds, a new report reveals.

UK: THE Museums and Galleries Commission has launched Cornucopia an initiative which aims to provide a complete picture of the wealth of UK museum collections.

PHILLIPS have assigned exclusive live broadcast rights for their auctions to The Auction Channel ... just as Bonhams announce that they have beaten the other three leading auction houses to offer real time bidding via the Internet – again with The Auction Channel.

IT IS not only in their association with The Auction Channel that Bonhams are forging ahead with new technologies; the saleroom recently re-launched its Web-site, which has been redesigned to incorporate a range of new client services.

NOT a week goes by without yet another development in the fast-moving world of digital auctions.