I have talked with antique dealers who tell me that Antiques Road Show
and eBay have nearly driven them under by drying up their supply.  The
former leads everyone to believe that everything in the attic might be
worth thousands, and the latter gives them a means of selling it for
whatever the market will bear.

Having bought a few things there myself, I can tell you that you need
to know exactly what you are buying and what the seller is
selling.  "Strategic ignorance" on the part of sellers is common.  "I
have no idea what this is..." "I'm no expert on this, I'm just selling
it for a friend..." etc., combined with a low starting price are
intended to rope people in.  Shill bidding, where two sellers conspire
to drive up the price of their own items, is common.

If you want a quick and salutary education in how wrong things can go
in these days of internet-based identity theft, check out the "Trust &
Safety" forum, where the various scams, con games, and cyber crimes are
discussed in excruciating detail.  P.T. Barnum was thinking on the
conservative side; on eBay, there's one born every 30 seconds.

As for the trade in artifacts, my colleagues and I marvel at the number
of fakes that abound, especially in the ground stone tool market.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert L. Schuyler" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, June 17, 2005 7:34 pm
Subject: EBAY

> 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
> favoriterecent 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
> reconstructthose 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
> beingassembled 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
> [log in to unmask]
>