EWBANK OPENS A WINDOW ON THE WORLD OF BIDDING WITH THE INTERNET
August 25, 2005
Discarded vase sets stratospheric price via real-time bidding in cyberspace
WOKING, Surrey – No one in the owner’s home, a local person who was downsizing, thought much of the old glass vase, so at sometime in the past, it had been put aside and forgotten. To the delight of its owner, it fetched £2,700 when it was sold recently by Surrey auctioneers Ewbank. To the delight of auctioneer Christopher Ewbank, the success of the lot – an unusual 1930s vase by the master French glassmaker René Lalique – was compelling justification for deciding to take his business into the 21st century and go live online via the Internet. Without two bidders competing for the lot online as the sale took place in Surrey, the vase might have been sold for £1,100. Picked out by a Ewbank specialist from a job lot brought in for sale and subsequently earmarked for the Summer Antiques and Fine Art auction on Thursday July 7, the vase had been estimated at £300-500.
Embracing the Internet and the latest technological tools was a pioneering move. So far only a handful of UK auctioneers are using the services of LiveAuctioneers.com, the New York-based company that, in association with eBay Live Auctions, makes global real-time bidding a reality. With 296 auction houses currently on its roster, LiveAuctioneers is making rapid inroads into the UK. Here, the idea may be in its infancy, but pioneers like Christopher Ewbank think this is his industry’s Next Big Thing.
“Bidding via the Internet, using your computer at home or in the office, has to make buying at auction a much more attractive proposition, particularly for bidders in other countries and time zones, or those who simply don’t have the time to attend our sales and sit through the auction to bid on a single lot,” Christopher Ewbank said.
“From agreeing to try the system, it took us just a week to set it up and put each lot online complete with picture, description and estimate. The results were amazing. The 910 lots we had for sale were viewed online more than 19,000 times, and by the time the sale started, we had more than 180 buyers registered with us to bid via the Internet. Of those, 97 came from North America, from 26 different states. Other bidders came from such obscure places as Taiwan, Korea and Macao. In addition to many bidders from continental Europe, there were 37 bidders based in the UK, and ironically, one was a professional person who lives in Old Woking who would not otherwise be able to participate in daytime sales.
“We have posted our sale catalogues on our Internet website for several years now, but because LiveAuctioneers.com is an eBay company, it means that anyone searching eBay for a specific object also gets to see if the same object is included in one of our sales … (There were) more than 500 emails asking for condition reports and advice, from buyers as far away as Australia. But the whole operation went off extremely smoothly, and bidders in the room experienced no difference in proceedings.
“The big difference was in the prices we achieved, and the Lalique vase illustrated the point perfectly. The bidding opened among buyers in the room and the price rose quickly to £1,100. At that point, one of the two bidders pulled out, but then two LiveAuctioneers bidders joined in and the price kept rising … the vase was sold to one of them bidding from his home on a ranch in Arizona for a price that was more than double the final bid in the room and more than five times the estimate. There can be no better proof that Internet real-time bidding does mean that our vendors’ property receives the maximum amount of exposure and achieves top prices when it is sold. Importantly, it costs no more for (consignors) to participate in the sales we put live and online.”
Julian Ellison, CEO of LiveAuctioneers.com, said live Internet bidding capability has sold itself in the UK. “British auction houses who’ve tried it can’t believe the results they get. It changes their whole way of doing business and immediately brings them a massive new pool of bidders from around the world who ordinarily might not even know these auction houses exist.”
Ewbank’s autumn sale of Antiques and Fine Art on October 6 will also be open to bidding at www.liveauctioneers.com, where it will also be possible, from Oct. 1, to leave absentee bids or pre-register to bid live online in the sale. For further information, please contact Christopher Ewbank FRICS ASFAV on 01483 223101 or e-mail antiques@ewbankauctions.co.uk.
Press contact: pr@liveauctioneers.com
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