A number of list members have made some excellent points about Ebay (e.g.
the need to actually purchase an item under
certain circumstances - dimensions, good illustration copy). I will
incorporate them in my presentation.

Ebay is an amazing tool = 100,000 flee market visits.

Yes, you do have to be careful about seller information. One of my favorite
recent example was an early postcard showing,
according to the seller,  the "Nazi" fleet in the Battle of Jutland. Most
of the sellers are very helpful and they can give detailed information
about some items. They can also sometimes send you to organizations or
collector groups that you did not know about.

They do at the same time some odd things. A year ago I bought a very
interesting early postcard album made up completely of
holiday images (e.g. Christmas, Easter). The seller wanted to be sure the
item got to me in fine shape so she
removed all the cards and mailed them separately from the album. In the
process she totally destroyed the original
order of the cards the album owner had created. We could only reconstruct
those card sequences for a few pages she
had scanned for Ebay. When I told her about this she was embarrassed but
told me she never thought the original order
would be of any concern but she would never disassemble such a document in
the future.

ETHICAL PROBLEMS

The specific problem, as one person pointed out, is the problem of looted
(dug up) artifacts. I avoid these items but do go for
"estate" examples (bottles) on which the paper labels are still intact.

A broader problem is that Ebay (cf. the Antique Road Show) is putting a
price on all artifacts and documents which in the
past were considered junk or of little value.  However, this intrusion of
the marker place is certainly counterbalanced by the
fact that most of such items would have never ended up in the local
historical society but would have gone into the
trash and been lost forever. Also concentrated collections are now being
assembled that hopefully might eventually get willed to
a proper archive or society. [Some of us need to consider doing a will !].

                                                                 RLS




Robert L. Schuyler
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA l9l04-6324

Tel: (215) 898-6965
Fax: (215) 898-0657
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