This is posted, from the AP Wire, with absolutely no bias either way on behalf of Antiques Trader. It's just simply an interesting bit of news about that dear friend of all online antiques... Meg Whitman.

Retiring eBay CEO Whitman joining McCain campaign
Source: AP - AP Wire Service

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Outgoing eBay chief executive Meg Whitman is joining Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign as national co-chairperson.

The McCain campaign said Friday that she will help raise money and policy development and travel the country on his behalf.

Whitman also helped former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during his bid for the Republican nomination.

She announced in January that she would retire from the online auction company after a decade at the helm.

She is leaving as eBay Inc. faces slowing growth.

Like I said, Trader has no opinion. It's just interesting...

I guess it's only fair to open this question up to a broader range of sources, so let's say then: What's the single most valuable antique you've ever bought at a sale of any kind? How's that?

When I go to a shop or a show, I tend to forget value and buy with nostalgia. This doesn't take me back too far, to the 1970s and early 1980s, so I always end up with a beaten-up Star Wars action figure, or dog-eared football card of some Dallas Cowboy I loved as a kid.

Once, though, on a lonely Sunday while waiting for a movie to start in Downtown Waupaca, WI, I wandered into an antiques store to try and find something for my daughter. After an hour of looking, and believing I would leave empty-handed, I came to the last booth and saw it: A Lawson Wood print of two monkeys and a bear with the caption, "A good story, well told."

I loved it immediately. The giggling bear, one wise ape scratching his chin with amusement, and one more monkey telling the story with an arm draped over the bear and a casual hand about to make the final point. The ground is littered with apple cores, nuts and banana peels. Simply awesome.

Monetary value? Who knows? Sentimental, seeing my daughter's face light up whenever she looks at it and points, then says, "Papa!"?

There's no value that can be placed on that.

So, what's the single most valuable antique you've ever bought at a sale of any kind?

Send your answer to me at noah.fleisher@fwpubs.com, or post your answer in the comments below.

For some reason it was very hard to write the headline to this post and not sound like I was trying to speak like Yoda...



"Hmmm... On eBay good ephemera buys still there are... Blind is eBay corporate... they must unlearn what they have learned..."

But I digress.

Marty at Ephemera Blog has posted this about another post he read and enjoyed about eBay still being the place to get good buys on ephemera, and he's right. Put aside your feelings about eBay corporate acting like a bunch of dolts in hurting it's dealer base and you can see, just by reading Marty's post, and the post he links to, that they're right.

As Master Yoda might say, "By your anger blinded be not... Good buys on ephemera there still are..."

Antique Trader had an article about this sale, by one Paul Mahwinney of Pittsburgh, of perhaps the greatest single collection of records ever to be sold at one time. Our story was in the 2-20 issue.

It is truly an amazing collection, and, if I had a cool $3M for just about every record ever recorded - and you can bet there are some rare and valuale ones in there - then I'd get in a second.

I'd reference Trader's article, but I couldn't resist this headline: Dude Auctions off "World's Greatest Record Collection."

Dude... Whoa...

Just what exactly will it take for owner's of private, important collections of art - especially those on public display - to add security?



This is an unbelivable story, reported widely across the world this morning, about more than $160M in art stolen from the Beuhrle Collection in Zurich. I like the New York Times coverage best, so I linked to it here.

Chances are the artwork will go underground and decorate the home of some one who doesn't care that it's stolen goods. The market in art theft if huge, and the paintings are re-sold at hugely below actualy value. You could pick up one of these paintings, the Cezanne for instance, for a song... Say $15 million...

Let me just go check that shoebox in my closet. Maybe I'll cash in those bonds I got for my bar mitzvah so long ago.

Hey Beuhrle Collection! Get a lock on those doors and a connection to the police. Then maybe those priceless paintings will remain where they are and you'll be proven worthy to own such cultural treasures!

Since it was mentioned in the 2-20 Trader, and on this blog earlier this week, here's what Specialist Auctions has released about its sale to compete with eBay.

I understand well and good that this is a press release from the company and they are representing their best position on the subject. I feel, from an editorial standpoint, that it bears looking at because it is one of the most public counteractions to eBay's recent changes.

Here's how they put it:

"SPECIALIST AUCTIONS TO GO HEAD TO HEAD WITH EBAY DURING “VINTAGE BLOW-OUT SALE”
 
VBOE on Specialist Auctions February 14 – February 21, 2008
 
In an effort to attract both unhappy Ebay buyers and sellers, the rapidly expanding UK-based site Specialist Auctions (www.specialistauctions.com) announced plans to compete directly with a long-held tradition of Ebay vintage clothing sellers: the popular “Vintage Blow Out Sale.”  During this sale, many vintage items are sold for $19.99 or less.
 
Specialist Auctions is calling its sale “VBOE,” and VBOE is rapidly catching on.  Numerous Ebay vintage sellers, some of them Powersellers, are signing up on Specialist Auctions in order to take advantage of the event, which, like VBO, runs from February 14 through February 21, 2008.  Many vintage items will be also be offered for $19.99 or less. 
 
During VBOE, buyers will be able to pick from a huge variety of vintage clothes, hats, accessories, jewelry, and more.  Just like on Ebay.  And Specialist Auctions is also offering collectibles, comics, in fact, anything that dates before 1989.
 
The recent changes at Ebay have prompted calls for a boycott starting February 18 and lasting at least a week.  By moving to sites like Specialist Auctions, sellers can sell with a clear conscience—and not be held hostage to payment method Paypal, an Ebay subsidiary that recently announced it could put a 21-day hold on payments, even if the item was shipped to the buyer.  Sellers on Specialist Auctions accept a wide array of payment options, including Google Checkout, Western Union, money orders, and bank transfers.  Not only that, the only charge to sellers that Specialist Auctions asks for is 3% of the sale price of an item—no matter how high or how low.
 
So if you REALLY want to shop victoriously, shop at Specialist Auctions during VBOE!"

I trust you can decide for yourself.

Everyone in the antiques business - collector and dealer alike - have an opinion about eBay. However you feel about it now, it's played a major role in antiques commerce over the last decade. The role, however, has been changing rapidly in recent weeks.

Ebay has suffered a well publicized decline in market share in the last year - something like 14% - in its auction business and has not seen it's Marketplace feature do as well as investors would have like to have seen in the face of Amazon and Google's growing share.

This all culminated last week when it was announced that Meg Whitman, the CEO who guided eBay to glory in the late 1990s, was resigning to "spend more time with her family." That last bit was mine... I just put it in for dramatic effect...

Whitman's resignation, and her successors pledge to amp up the Marketplace and "Buy It Now" features while de-emphasizing the auction business, along with a reduction in listing fees and a tweak to the feedback system - which many sellers fear will lead to shady buyers not being weeded out - have given eBay more press than its had in a few years. Whether it's positive remains to be seen.

Here's what Trader wants to know this week: With a leadership change, lower listing fees and a shift in selling focus, can eBay remain a relevant force in the marketplace?

Post your answer to the new Antique Trader Blog at www.antiquetraderblog.com/atblog, or send your response to noah.fleisher@fwpubs.com.

To be fair, it means change for the entire business, but I needed a way to get you reading.

As was widely reported earlier this week, Meg Whitman is stepping down as CEO of eBay. While there she oversaw phenomenal growth in the business, making the company a household name and turning on countless thousands of people to the business of auctions - even if they weren't strictly antiques auctions. The impact of eBay on the antiques business, as noted earlier this week, has been huge.

The last few years, however, eBay has seen a precipitous decline in its listings, its sellers and its overall business, so Wall Street was expecting Whitman's resignation for a while, and - as reported here in a good article from Fortune Magazine - her successor John Donahoe will most likely be making some significant changes to the online auction giant to make it more competitive with other sites like Amazong and Google, where a lot of sellers are going to market their goods.

Some have blamed eBays diminished status on the yearly hike in seller's fees, while others in the media have speculated that eBay has lost market share because it didn't focus on buyer's needs. In the print version of Antique Trader our Web writer Gabe Constantine has written about this before. And it does indeed seem that eBay is already trying to make itself more customer friendly in light of its problems.

Here's what the real change is going to be, and its ramifications on antiques will be interesting to watch, considering how good it's been in the past for many dealers and buyers. Basically, eBay, under Donahoe, will emphasize its auctions less and put more into its Marketplace where you can "Buy it Now," and not have to wait.

For many, I imagine, this will be great, because you will simply click and buy and await the arrival of your booty in the mail. It does, however, fundamentally change the nature of what antiquers on the eBay have come to expect. NOt to mention the many people and services that make a good bit of do-re-mi from sniping software - the programs that allow you to get a last second bid in as time expires.

I can hardly blame eBay for wanting to change and be competitive with the other online retailing giants. This is America and anything is fair game. Also, antiques and its varying subsets have evolved in the past decade themselves, with sites like Ruby Lane and others, to conduct eBay type auction and Marketplace business in a quality-controlled atmosphere run by people with actual expertise in the area. We've all heard stories, and experienced it ourselves, where what you got was not what was represented in the sale - a fake, fraud or something of severaly diminished quality - or the price was artificially inflated by scamming dealers looking to fleece excited buyers caught up in the heat of the moment. With the ability to control our own sites and quality, the need for eBay among hardcore antiquers is certainly less. It should be interesting to see ow eBay weathers the transition.

Personally, I wonder if it isn't too late for eBay to make up that ground. The company enjoyed so much success and such heightened status in the last decade, that it seemed that it thought that - because it was the industry leader - that it didn't necessarily need to change and that the busines would follow it instead of the reverse. It's a classic mistake, one that's been made countless times over the centuries.

What does everyone else think?