Going,
going, gone! Sold to the highest bidder at the auction, on the phone or
on a new eBay platform that will stream Sotheby’s New York auctions
live beginning next month.
The
new live auctions platform – ebay.com/sothebys – that launches on
Tuesday pairs Sotheby’s 270 years of experience selling art and antiques
with eBay’s digital expertise and 155 million active users worldwide to
meet the demand for online bidding.
The
first auctions on the platform will begin on April 1 with photographs
and a themed New York sale that will include the 13 letters of the 1970s
Yankee Stadium sign that could fetch up to $600,000 from the collection
of baseball great Reggie Jackson.
Online
art sales are not new. Sotheby’s and its rival Christie’s conduct them.
But the platform will bring Sotheby’s vast inventory to a new audience
in the hopes of boosting sales and prices.
“What
this partnership is about is leveraging eBay’s audience and ability to
target that audience and find clients that have the means to participate
in a Sotheby’s auction,” Josh Pullan, senior vice president, director
of e-commerce at Sotheby’s, said.
Online
sales of art and antiques are estimated to have reached 3.3 billion
euros ($3.5 billion, roughly Rs. 21,988 crores) or about 6 percent of
global sales in 2014, according to a report commissioned by the
Netherlands-based European Fine Art Foundation.
The
majority of online sales, it added, was in the $1,000 to $50,000 range.
Most of Sotheby’s New York auctions will be streamed on the platform
except for high-priced evening sales of contemporary, modern and
Impressionist art and other specialist categories.
Sotheby’s
has seen a nearly 25 percent rise in online bidding in 2014 over the
previous year. In an auction of Picasso Ceramics, 75 percent of the lots
offered attracted online bids.
The
platform includes photographs, commentary and audio/ video components.
It is designed to emulate the auction catalog in a digital format and to
replicate the experience of seeing art in a museum before taking
bidders to the live auction where they can bid in real time.
Megan
Ford, director, emerging verticals and live auctions at eBay, said
technology is changing and people have become more comfortable
purchasing high-ticket items online in the past few years.
The
premier tier of inventory for art and collectibles, she added, was
previously only available in the live-sale format at auction houses.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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