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Illicit Antiquities
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On-line auctions: a new venue for the antiquities marketChristopher Chippindale & David W J GillChristopher ChippindaleMuseum of Archaeology & Anthropology Cambridge University Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3DZ England cc43@cam.ac.uk David W.J. Gill
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For a century the market in antiquities has had three main venues: public auctions, sales from dealers whose stock may be publicly announced or displayed by one means or another, and private transactions. The Internet has now provided a fourth venue, in the web auctions that have become an established market-place, and where antiquities are a standard and even a conspicuous class of objects. What is the market in antiquities on the web? What form does it take? How does it resemble and differ from the established marketing forums, especially from the conventional auction, since the web markets declare themselves to be on-line auctions rather than on-line dealers? In any commercial transaction, participants want reassurance on three fronts:
Dealers address the same issues in similar ways, and — like the auction-houses — provide the comfort of their reputation and of membership of trade associations. The Internet, famously unstructured, has to deal with these issues as e-commerce finds its steadier place after the e-boom and then e-bust of 2000/2001. E-commerce is working well for commodities like airline tickets, where the purchaser easily understands what they are buying without needing to see anything. Antiquities are harder, since so much depends on the exact details, and these being fairly described. How does the buyer know if the seller is who they present themselves to be? And the seller the buyer? This article sketches the present state of two on-line outfits that sell antiquities. Interested readers will get a good idea also by spending half-an-hour on-line with them at www.ebay.com and www.sothebys.com. They are described and their offerings analyzed in rather different ways, following the different ways they operate and the different kinds of information they offer about each lot, and because it is instructive to compare sothebys.com with the established practices of its parent physical auction-houses. eBay: antiquities in the world’s yard-sale (www.ebay.com)eBay, ‘The World’s Online Marketplace’, is a giant of a site where one might hope to find whatever ordinary or extraordinary kind of object one might want, or not want, to acquire. Its 30 categories include ‘Antiques’ (on 11 November 2001, 118,722 items) and ‘Collectibles’ (1,445,036 items). Within the ‘Antiques’ category itself are 17 further categories, one of them ‘Antiquities’. On 11 November 2001, 4237 items were offered on 85 pages within ‘Antiquities’ (on 13 October 2001, it had been 3929 antiquities on 79 pages). There are also ‘Coins’ (113,983 items), ‘Jewelry, Gems and Watches’ (361,557 items) and ‘Pottery & Glass’ (295,381 items) as categories where antiquities might lurk. With over 6.6 million (!) individual items offered (plus the unstated number in the ‘Mature Content’ category and those on the separate eBay Motors site), antiquities are a minute portion of what eBay sells. Each lot has a single brief entry on the page, with (usually) a little image, a few words of description, the current highest bid, the number of bids made, and the exact date and time when the auction for that item closes, up to ten days ahead of when it was listed. If you click on the item, you are taken to a page with a fuller description and large photograph(s). You can work through the pages, or search in any or all categories. A search for ‘Roman’ within ‘Antiquities’ produces 481 items. A search for ‘Gandhara’ in all categories produces two books and ‘an ancient Gandhara sculpture’ in the category ‘Southeast Asian’ within the category ‘Asian Antiques’ within the category ‘Antiques’ (so not within ‘Antiquities’). This item 1484338485 is being sold from Briarwood, New York, and has yet to receive a bid. ‘nadeemkayani’, its seller, declares: ‘This piece is from Sawat Valley and it weights 30 lbs and 22 inches tall and 7 inches wide. It is in great condition.’[1] There is a set of 5 photographs of it presented in a single large JPEG (this is not on the eBay site but at http://www.bollywoodjam. com/multipicstatue.jpg, on a site otherwise about ‘Bollywood’ Indian movies) (Fig. 1).
eBay does not closely supervise what is offered [2] stating ‘These items are not verified by eBay; caveat emptor’. Clicking on ‘caveat emptor’ takes you to a page explaining how eBay works, ‘At eBay, trading with confidence is the key to successful transactions.’ On a 13 October page in ‘Antiquities’ taken at hazard, page 44, there are 50 lots, of which 35 are not antiquities but antiques or not even that: ‘4 PIECES OF DOMINICAN AMBER WITH INSECTS £20.00’, ‘Antique Plate Master Simpson by Arthur Denis $12.00’, ‘cigarette case from the 1940’s ???? $9.99’, also a 1995 Chevrolet Corvette sports car3 $14,600. All pages are different, but this strikes us as pretty typical of the many we have browsed. The 15 lots which are or might be antiquities are:
How does eBay deal with the three issues: exactly what is the object being sold?; does the seller actually own it?; will the purchaser pay? For ‘what is the object?’, the entry offers a description and photograph(s). The photographs, within the limits of Internet standard, strike us as remarkably good. Even though digital cameras are now cheap and easy to use, and transferring the image onto a web-page also straightforward, the time and effort involved seems to us very high for an object that may be worth as little as $5.99. At current currency conversions these 15 lots total just $527, and average only $35. As a page with image(s) is created for every lot offered, can either sellers or eBay make enough for the commerce to be worthwhile? On 11 November, for example, item 1484227951 is a ‘HUGE Cypriot 1000bc painted Handled Amphora’, for which the first and only bid of $100 has not reached the reserve; its page has two large and crisp photographs each of 480 x 640 pixels (Fig. 2). It is described as:
For ‘does the seller actually own it?’, eBay offers support to encourage a trust in the seller which also supports confidence as regards ‘what is the object?’. Nearly all vendors have sold on eBay before, and the site provides cross-references to other items the same vendor has currently for sale. The HUGE Cypriot Amphora is offered by ‘Vianova’; a link from it takes you to another page where Vianova’s profile is proven to be good: 44 previous transactions are all reported in positive terms (e.g. ‘Praise : honorable man, well packaged, would buy from again, thanks Vic A A A A A ++++++++’; ‘Praise: great item, great seller, easy transaction, thanks!’), with no neutrals and no negatives.[4] Another link takes you from the amphora to all Vianova’s current items for sale, 46 which range from ‘Early 19thc Huge Hunters Boar Head Tankard’ ($255) to ‘German MAX KAHRER 1917 Klosterneuberg Summer’ ($1025). In this way, you can see what the seller deals in, and what previous customers think of their experiences. Profiles are overwhelmingly positive. Browsing eBay is free and available to anyone on the Internet. To sell, buy or contact others via eBay by e-mail requires registration, for which there is no charge but for which you must provide an e-mail address (and credit-card details as proof of identity if your e-mail address is with one of the ‘anonymous’ services like hotmail.com). In registering with eBay, you accept a user agreement which includes: ‘eBay cannot and does not control the quality, safety, legality or accuracy of any item listed or any item description. Trading over the Internet has certain inherent risks; I understand these risks exist even if I take advantage of various tools offered by eBay in order to minimize the risk of fraud’; and ‘I will not provide fraudulent information and I am solely responsible for any information I provide to eBay. I will comply with all laws applicable to my activities on the web site and with this Agreement. I will not sell any prohibited, illegal or infringing items on eBay.’ No means is evident as to how these requirements are to be enforced. There is no charge to browse, bid on, or buy items at eBay. There are fees to list and sell items. To list an item with a reserve over $200 costs $3.30, with additional charges between 10 cents and $99.95 for special features such as photographs, bold type or special prominence to draw attention to your item. There is a further final value fee if the item is sold; it is 5 per cent of the sale price if that is less than $25, reducing to 2.5 per cent for the portion between $25 and $1000, and 1.25 per cent for the portion over $1000. As a registered member of the eBay community one of us asked ‘Vianova’ by e-mail an obvious question about the pot: ‘I know that a lot of ancient objects are said to be illegally excavated and illicitly exported from their country of origin. How can I be sure this pot was legitimately exported from Cyprus?’ A ‘Vic Showell’ promptly replied:
‘nadeemkayani’, seller of the Gandhara statue, is a new eBay user without either other items currently for sale or any previous transactions in their profile. One of us asked them by e-mail, ‘I know that a lot of ancient objects are said to be illegally excavated and illicitly exported from their country of origin, especially Gandharan objects. What is the country of origin of this item? How can I be sure it was legitimately exported?’ A ‘Nadeem’ promptly replied: ‘I am not sure how to answer the question, I am selling this item for another friend. If you win the item all I can tell you is that the item will be sent to you and get there.’ As regards ‘will the purchaser pay?’, or other ways in which the transaction may go awry, eBay has clear advice for the seller and will itself intervene under its ‘Non-Paying-Bidder/Final Value Fee Credit Request Program’. Buyer and seller should be in direct contact within 3 business days of the listing’s close. The seller should send a ‘payment reminder’ to the buyer after 3 days but not past 30 days. Then, if still unpaid, the seller should file a ‘non-payment bidder alert’ with eBay after seven days but not past 45 days of your listing’s close. eBay then reminds the buyer of their obligations. If that fails, then the seller can ask eBay for a credit in respect of the sale commission due to eBay. The defaulting buyer receives warnings from eBay for their first and second offences; under a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule, the third offence leads to an indefinite suspension, a suspension of a user’s privilege to use the eBay site for more than 60 days with no definite reinstatement date. eBay states: ‘Users who have been indefinitely suspended may not register with eBay during the suspension, nor may they use eBay’s site in any way. Failure to abide by this restriction will lead to referral for criminal prosecution with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.’ With millions of registered users of eBay, one wonders if a suspended user might be tempted to re-register under a different e-mail address. Other general auction sites, like its smaller rival QXL (www.qxl.com), operate much like eBay. We are struck by the huge volume of business eBay does (or, strictly, the huge volume of business would-be sellers hope to do). There are more than 6 million items offered on an average day which, with a closing date of a maximum 10 days after opening for each item, means upwards of 600,000 new items offered every day. [5] This may explain why both the insertion fees and the commission on a successful sale is low. On 19 July 2001, eBay reported a second-quarter turnover of $180.9 million, an increase of 84 per cent over the previous year, and profit of $24.6 million; 98.7 million auctions had taken place during the quarter, and eBay had 34.1 million registered users. Its share price on 9 November 2001 was $56.95. In contrast, London-quoted QXL reported a first-quarter trading loss on 31 August 2001 of £8.5 ($12.3) million on sales of £1.6 ($2.3) million (that is, losses over five times its income). Its shares rallied to 6.25 pence, having been at £8 at the height of the e-commerce bubble and collapsing to under 1 per cent of the peak. eBay is expanding outside its original US base, and looks set to rule the world as the broad on-line market for everything, antiquities included. Sotheby’s (below) is not presently profitable, reporting on 13 November 2001 revenues for its first three quarters together of $225 million and a net loss of $41 million. Internet-related expenses were $18.7 million, down from $44 million the year before; the Internet-related loss seems to have been $9 million, indicating Internet-related revenue of around $10 million. Sothebys.com: from the physical auction-room to the InternetWhere eBay is a new venture of the electronic age, Sothebys.com is an extension into the electronic market-place of one of the old and dominant physical auction-houses. Sotheby’s has had two separate Internet ventures. One, jointly with the Internet book-seller Amazon.com, was after a while folded into the other, sothebys.com. The eBay opening page is a mass of colourful elements crammed into the screen, each intended to catch attention; sothebys.com is different in style, a cool and elegant design with, even, quite some white space (it is, also, much slower than eBay). From the opening page, you can go to catalogues of the physical auctions, future and past, which are electronic versions of the conventional printed catalogues, or to the electronic-only on-line operations within sothebys.com. The sothebys.com section has 13 categories under on-line auctions, one of them ‘Ancient and Ethnographic Art’ (380 lots together on 14 November 2001) within which are ‘Antiquities’ (59 lots) and three other categories, ‘African & Oceanic Art’, ‘American Indian Art’ and ‘Pre-Columbian Art’, under which some American antiquities appear. [6] Exactly what is the object being sold, in what condition, and is it what it purports to be? Here, the key asset is the Sotheby’s name and reputation as a centre of expertise. These items are being sold through Sotheby’s, and the seller is a Sotheby’s Associate. There are detailed and lengthy conditions of sale [7] which parallel the lengthy conditions conventional in the printed catalogues of physical auctions. There is a specific provision to protect the buyer if the object turns out to be counterfeit, a deliberate modern forgery. Does the seller actually own it with ‘clean title’, so the buyer will indeed then possess it? No specific statement is made in the conditions of sale; perhaps none is needed because, again, the status of Sotheby’s Associate should provide reassurance. As regards ‘will the purchaser pay?’, Sotheby’s takes an active role. The buyer pays Sotheby’s (rather than the Associate), and only when that payment has been completed will sothebys.com release the item and direct the seller to ship the item to the buyer. The conditions remind the buyer that making a bid is irrevocably to agree to buy if the bid is successful. Browsing sothebys.com is free and available to anyone on the Internet. To buy or contact requires registration,[8] for which you must provide your real name, phone number, email address, credit-card details and other requested information. The commission to sellers on sothebys. com, all of which are established Associates (above), is not stated on the site.[9] Buyers pay 15 per cent of the successful bid price up to $15,000, 10 per cent of the balance above that figure. [10] What kind of antiquities are sold on-line by sothebys.com, and how do they compare with what is offered at their physical auctions? Who by? What is their declared archaeological context and history? Of what value? To explore these issues, we analyzed what was offered for sale on sothebys.com in mid-2001, under the class of ‘Antiquities’. On a series of dates between 11 May and 8 August we recorded some details of each lot offered, excluding those lots previously recorded and any lot which evidently had previously been offered under another lot number.[11] This totals 494 lots, of which 490 are antiquities.[12] Fifteen of the lots will show the range, [13] with their estimates:
Characteristics of sothebys.com in relation to Sotheby’s physical auctionsSellers In their physical auction catalogues Sotheby’s, and other auction-houses, are reticent about the names of sellers. For a few lots, the seller is exactly named. For most lots, the seller is unnamed or referred to in terms (‘Property of a Lady’, ‘Property of a New York Collector’) so general they are effectively unnamed. In a sample of 4201 lots offered in general antiquities auctions at Sotheby’s New York over the past several years, 21 per cent of sellers were exactly named; 79 per cent were actually or effectively unnamed.[14] A long-standing characteristic of both New York and London physical auctions is that the dealers whose business is much of the market are never named when they are sellers. Sotheby’s on-line is quite different. For 12 lots, the seller is Sotheby’s New York itself. For another 476 of the 490 lots (97 per cent) the seller is named. All of these are dealers, described as a ‘Sothebys.com Associate’, and in each lot a link is given to a page about the Associate, informing the browser about where the dealer is, and what kind of things they deal in. Generally there is a link to the dealer’s own web-site. For only 2 lots is the vendor unnamed, with the lot reported simply as ‘offered by a Sothebys.com Associate’. Table 1 shows the names of the sellers. Six account for 400 lots, 82 per cent of the total. Table 1. Sellers on Sothebys.com, mid 2001.
This pattern arises from the commercial structure of sothebys.com. Unlike eBay, it is not a public auction, through which anyone may offer something they wish to sell, but a collaborative venture under which only associates may sell. Associates gain access to sothebys.com under a commercial agreement by which the Associate undertakes to sell on the Internet only through sothebys.com. Archaeology What are the find-spots of the objects? What are their archaeological contexts? For 92 per cent no indication of any kind is given (as against 97 per cent for the sample from Sotheby’s physical auctions). For the 8 per cent for which an indication of find-spot is given, it is always general and imprecise — e.g. ‘Probably from the Fayum’, ‘found in Judea’, ‘from Jerusalem’, ‘This rare and attractive Lamp was found in Bethlehem’ — rather than an archaeological context in the research sense. History In respect of the history of the objects, when they were found and who previously owned them, sothebys.com is more forthcoming than are the physical auction catalogues. Just 3 per cent of items on sothebys.com first ‘surface’ when offered for auction with nothing at all said about their history, compared with the 69 per cent surfacing without any history at the physical auctions. For 49 per cent of items at sothebys. com, however, the history says little, as it so vague (‘Property of a South-West Collection’, ‘Private Californian collection’) or just confirms who the seller is (‘Property of Venus Antiquities, Jerusalem’ for an item being sold by ‘Venus Galleries, Jerusalem, Israel; ‘Property from a New York dealer’ for an item being sold by Mark Goodstein, Staten Island). For just one item of the sample of 490 is the history stated from or nearly from the ground: a ‘Large Roman glass necklace’ offered by Sands of Time Antiquities that was ‘Excavated in Gazantep, Southern Turkey during the first half of the 20th century’ (the same 0 per cent with history from the ground applies to the sample for the physical auctions). For 2 per cent a history is reported for the item back to a date before 1914 (compare 5 per cent in the physical auctions); for 12 per cent a history back to 1915–1944 (compare 3 per cent in the physical auctions); for 11 per cent a history back to 1945–1973 (compare 6 per cent in the physical auctions); for 3 per cent a history back to 1974–1986 (compare 5 per cent in the physical auctions); for 17 per cent a history back to a date since 1987 (compare 4 per cent in the physical auctions). So more is said about history than is usual for physical auctions, but not of a kind actually to report what happened to the items and how they came to move out from beneath the ground and on to the market-place. Comparative material Auction-houses sometimes mention comparative material, that is, similar items already known or published. Comparative material is mentioned for 11 per cent of items on sothebys.com, compared with 26 per cent at the physical auctions. DiscussionNeither eBay nor sothebys.com discloses the reserve on an item. eBay publishes the most recent bid and the bidding history; sothebys.com also publishes a high and low estimate of what a successful bid might be, as it does for physical auctions. This makes it possible to sketch the value of what is offered on sothebys.com: our 490 lots have a mean low estimate of $1118 and a mean high of $1652; the cheapest items have a low of $100 and high of $200; the most expensive item, an Apulian Red Figure bell krater has a low of $18,000 and high of $20,000; the median item has a low of $800 and high of $1000. These values set sothebys.com in the middle of the market, well below the physical auction rooms where estimates over $100,000 are routine and few items have estimates below $1000, and well above eBay with its items going down to $10 and below. As on eBay, sothebys.com allows a seller to fix a ‘knock-out’ price which, if offered, makes an immediate sale and the auction terminates; 31 per cent of items were available that way. Are sothebys.com selling much of what they offer? There are bids for only 10 per cent of items when we have looked at them, and most of these are below, usually far below the low estimate. When we look, for example, there is not a single bid for any one of 76 lots of west Asian seals offered by Paul Anavian, New York. In that group of items most have 5 days to go before the auction closed. There may later be a last-minute flurry in the closing day or hours or even minutes, but from watching the site for a while we doubt that is the routine. And excluded from the 490 items we have logged are about 100 other items, in the same period, which appear to be the same object as had previously been offered now for sale again, after having failed to sell before. A certain portion of items failing to reach reserve and be sold is routine in auction-rooms, but the signs are that sothebys.com is not achieving as high a proportion of successful sales as is usual in physical auctions. The range of items offered is typical of the lower end of the physical auction range, and also in light of the specialities of the not many — only 19 — Sotheby’s Associates using sothebys.com in this period. The 61 items from Venus Galleries, Jerusalem, Israel (Authorized Antiquities Dealer License No. 144), for instance, are largely finds from Israel. Among the 58 items from Fragments of Time, Medfield (MA), are many items from the Diniacopoulos Collection, assembled 1910–1932 and 1954; it is, Fragments explains,
Other items from the same collection are at present appearing in the physical auctions of Sotheby’s New York. Set side by side, sothebys.com is a minnow alongside a giant; it is a specialized minnow, where eBay is unbounded. Where sothebys.com may have 59 antiquities on-sale on any one day, eBay has of the order of 1300.[15] They are in different parts of the market, eBay at the bottom, sothebys.com in the middle (with Sotheby’s physical auctions at the top). They operate in very different ways. sothebys.com is a tighter and more controlled operation: selling is restricted to its Associates; it takes more care — to judge from the descriptions for each lot — (or its sellers are induced to take more care) in describing lots; the financial transaction is conducted through sothebys.com. eBay is looser. The charges are very different. At eBay, the seller has modest costs to insert the item, and then pays 5 per cent commission in respect of very cheap items up to $25, then 2.5 per cent over $25, 1.25 per cent over $1000. The buyer is not charged. At sothebys.com the seller may also pay.[16] The buyer pays 15 per cent, then 10 per cent over $15,000. If the charge to on-line sellers is much the same as it commonly is for physical auctions, then sothebys.com altogether takes up to 30 per cent or more, on the face of it more than 10 times what eBay receives for a transaction involving a $999 dollar item. So sothebys.com needs to have very high prestige, and to be seen to provide a very superior place to sell it and to buy if it is to sustain itself in competition with eBay when its charges are so much greater. Christie’s, the other dominant player in the art auction-houses, has not created an electronic operation yet. Bonhams and Phillips, smaller players in London, merged in July 2001 under the ownership of the French luxury goods combine LVMH. With Sotheby’s and Christie’s embroiled in court cases in New York, where it has been proven they operated a cartel contrary to US anti-trust law, the stage is set for three auction combines to battle for the top of the market. They will have to move fast, and electronically well, if they are not to lose the bottom and the middle of it to the likes of eBay. For those concerned with the other values of antiquities, these objects as precious evidence of other peoples at other times, a flourishing electronic market is not a happy innovation. Auction-houses and their physical auctions promote the market in antiquities, which may be regretted, but they also have provided documentation and order. The catalogues are printed and provide a permanent record, even if the information is slight, of what was offered for sale. And the auction-houses provide a central and public place where all can know what is offered, and where the objects themselves are always physically present. The electronic market provides documentation only of a transient kind. One can (as we have in this study) look at an item offered on a page one minute, and then find just a minute later the page has vanished. We do not know if the on-line auction rooms archive their pages, or whether any other archive keeps them. And the objects are not physically produced, only referred to by photographs. One encouraging sign was a direct statement in respect of illicit antiquities made to us by sothebys.com. When one of us asked sothebys. com about illicit antiquities, Scott Klarman of sothebys.com Customer Service rapidly and helpfully replied, ‘It is both illegal and unlawful for any of our screened dealers to submit items that have been exported out of other countries illegally to post them to Sothebys.com.’[17] This is a good guarantee [18] Lindeau Gems, of New York, stands out from the routine sellers on sothebys.com for having offered only one item, a ‘Gandhara Buddha Statue, Third Century ad’. No archaeology or history is reported for it; its estimate is $10,500 to $14,000. Lindeau Gems, in its page as a sothebys.com Associate and its own web-site at www.lindeau.com, declares itself to be a specialist gem dealer in emeralds (‘From the mines of Muzo and Chivor in Colombia’ whence their emeralds have ‘worked their way through perilous emerald trade to Lindeau’[19]), rubies (‘Monghsu, is a gem mining area in Myanmar which sits in rebel territory. Guerrilla control of the area hasn’t stopped the flow of rubies from mine to market. Most stones leave the country as contraband rough and enter Thailand at Mae-Sai, a rendezvous point between gem smugglers and dealers and sapphire’), and sapphires (from Sri Lanka, now ‘the only steady producer of fine sapphires’). Lindeau’s sole offering in antiquities is shown in four clear and large photographs, looking for all the world as if it has been recently hacked off its supporting surface (Fig. 3). Suppose one wanted to give the impression of an antiquity being offered that was looted. One might choose Gandharan, since Gandharan is notorious for the looters’ interest in it. One might illustrate the piece as if recently hacked out of its sculptural setting. One might have it offered for sale by a company that does not normally deal in antiquities, but specializes in selling gems that are, as its own web-site declares, usually smuggled — and smuggled from the very region of the word where Gandharan antiquities come from! It is in respect of items like these that sothebys.com’s unambiguous statement, ‘It is both illegal and unlawful for any of our screened dealers to submit items that have been exported out of other countries illegally to post them to Sothebys.com’, will be material. (The tabulations of sothebys.com sales used in this article are to be found at <www.swan.ac.uk/classics/staff/dg/looting/> together with other material from our research.)
1. Direct quotations from the sites and from e-mails are given here exactly as found or received. eBay does not correct spelling mistakes. Readers knowledgeable about site-names and technicalities will find them a bit haphazard as the sellers write them. [Return to text] 2. But nor does it permit the sale of everything it is legal to sell. After the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, 11 September 2001, eBay banned sale of debris from the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which was offered for sale immediately after the terror attacks. The first pieces of rubble, the London Guardian reported (13 September 2001), went on sale within an hour of the first plane crash: ‘Many entries on the site call on fellow users to boycott items related to the attacks. "I am seeing this in happen in auction after auction, and it makes me sick! I applaud eBay for not allowing it to happen in many auctions by cancelling them. It seems that eBay is missing a few though," said one.’ Staff at the company stepped in to remove the entries advertising the souvenirs. [Return to text] Culture Without Context has previously reported on an alleged piece of ancient Egyptian pyramid offered for sale on eBay and the sale stopped after questions were asked about the item’s authenticity and legality (see In The News CWC issue 5) [Return to text] 3. eBay does not seem to organize what is put in which category. [Return to text] 4. A ‘profile’ reporting past customer experience with the seller is a common feature of sites selling over the Internet. See e.g. Amazon.com in respect of second-hand books sold through it, alongside the new books Amazon.com itself sells. [Return to text] 5. No wonder eBay was not able in policing its site to remove all souvenirs of the World Trade Center attack (previous note). [Return to text] 6. There are other categories, such as ‘Ceramics & Glass’ where antiquities could appear. [Return to text] 7. At http://auction.sothebys.com/snN87a9c/conditions. html. Also ‘Terms of use’ at http://www.sothebys.com/about/as_terms.html. [Return to text] 8. Registration is permitted only by individuals or others resident in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. [Return to text] 9. The charge to sellers at Sotheby’s London physical auctions is 15 per cent up to £2000 ($2900), then 10 per cent up to £60,000 ($87,000), 8 per cent thereafter, plus 1 per cent for insurance, plus a charge for any illustration in the catalogue. [Return to text] 10. The charge to buyers at Sotheby’s New York physical auctions is 20 per cent up to $15,000, then 15 per cent up to $100,000), 10 per cent thereafter. [Return to text] 11. Sometimes an object offered was described in similar terms to a previous lot, but not so closely as to be evidently the same object. These are included as separate lots on the study. It is possible a few will be the same object, offered more than once, and therefore counted twice in our tabulation. [Return to text] 12. The other four, such as a Russian icon and a Mammoth Bone necklace, are excluded from our analysis. [Return to text] 13. The full tabulation is available on-line at http://www.swan.ac.uk/classics/staff/dg/looting/eantiq.htm. These 15 examples are not the first 15 in our tabulation, as often a dealer places several lots together which then make a single block in the listing, but numbers 5, 10, 15, etc., within it. [Return to text] 14. Sotheby’s London is even more reticent than is Sotheby’s New York about who the sellers are. [Return to text] 15. See above for the proportion of items in the eBay ‘Antiquities’ category which are actually are antiquities. [Return to text] 16. See above. [Return to text] 17. E-mail to Chippindale, 17 June 2001. [Return to text] 18. However, in a further e-mail, Mr Klarman quoted a clause in the sale conditions which appears to concern legal export from the country where the item currently is, rather than to any previous export of the item from its country of origin. [Return to text] 19. Quotations from pages of www.lindeau.com. [Return to text] First posted April 2002; Page design updated September 2006 |
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