Wow. This is... Well, let's just say that some of the smartest people you'll meet can end up being the dumbest.

This story is being widel reported on most major news outlets. It seems that an archivist at the New York State Library in Albany has been scamming and then selling invaluable documents, just to pay his bills. He's been selling them on eBay, no less!

I just find this to be unfathomable, both ethically, and logistically. Daniel Lorello - who I had dealt with in my previous jobs with a couple of other magazines when I was living in The Hudson Valley for many years - was taking documents from the library and posting them online for sale. Now, I know you can sell alot of things anonymously on eBay - there are alot of fools and charlatans out there that never get caught - but alot of these things are of low value, both historically and monetarily. Somehow, though, Lorello thought that things like a letter from Vice President John C. Calhoun (pictured above) would go unnoticed. the troubling thing is just how much he stole, and how long he's been doing it.

Authorities recovered more than 400 stolen items from his house in Upstate NY. He plead not guilty...

"Officer, I swear I have no idea how those got there. It's a conspiracy!"

Wow... Just wow...

Just a few thoughts as I eat my lunch...    

Anyone who regularly reads my editorials in Antique Trader - Anyone? Anyone? - knows that I love to pick on the minutiae of the market, especially as it pertains to those that have and those that have not. The high-end is an easy whipping boy, because if you've got millions in the bank, it doesn't matter what the rest of the market is doing, or how it's trending; you will still be able to buy what you want, when you want it. The result is that, yes, the high-end is generally out of touch with the middle and low end of the market. Them's the facts.

A few weeks ago, however, when we asked the question of our readers: Can you still find good antiques dirt cheap, and where?, I got an email from Darylle Lambert, the author of "31 Steps To Your Millions in Antiques," pointing out, among other things, that if the economy tanks it's even better for the overall antiques market because people will want to put there money where their investment is safe and others will want to sell their antiques to meet their overhead. Regardless of how you slice it, at whatever level, we all know that your money is safe in antiques. Unlike most things, the money you put into a piece is going to stay there - as long as it remains in good condition - and, in most cases, increase as the years go on. Darylle is a smart man, and he makes a good point; one that I've been thinking about for the last few weeks since he wrote me.

I have to say that I agree with him, and - even if there is much turmoil and change in the antiques business right now as dealers get in or out of the business, as the best stuff becomes harder to get and as a segment of the antiquing population dies off - I would say that the market in general seems to bear out his theory. As things have gotten diffifult in the last few years it does seem that people have been drawn to auctions and shows just as others have been drawn to sell off their collections to put some cash in the bank. If they aren't spending big bucks on the items that make a dealer's, or auctioneer's day with a single sale, they are indeed spending. In times of turmoil - like now, with a looming recession and an uncertain presidential election - people are going to turn to comfort objects. They might not buy a Chippendale highboy for a few hundred thousand, but they're going to pony up $75 for that good condition 1962 copy of a Scrooge McDuck comic, or for anything that takes them back to a safe place in there lives. I myself, being a kid of the 1970s, go back to the arcade games and cartoon characters that populated the simpler days of my early life and I have been buying things that take me there.

There will always be examples of people who can find something cheap and make a healthy - sometimes hefty - profit off of it, but more to the point, I think, is that people will always be willing to spend something that reminds them of the uncomplicated times in their lives, be it tin soldiers, ceramic cups or postcards. This is what makes the heart of the market beat, even if it's the million dollar sales that make it pound. We all need the thrill, but me? I'll gladly take a steady pulse over a racing one.

The Los Angeles Times reported last Friday on Federal agencies raisding American Museums, all in Southern California, to recover artifacts stolen from South Asian Countries. The AP is reporting the same thing.



As a longtime lover of Asian art, particularly the sublime Buddhist art of Burma, Bhutan, Thailand and Cambodia, this is a disturbing story, especially when you consider that the museums in the story continued to pursue stolen goods long after they knew it was a crime, that the goods were stolen and long after federal agencies had made it clear they were cracking down and foreign countries were looking to get their cultural heritage(s) back.

The looting of the aritfacts of other nations is nothing new; it's been going on for centuries. In fact, a lot of people got fabulously wealthy on brokering stolen good - particularly Asian, because there was so little oversight, with many Asian government officials actively participating for a cut of the cash.

In recent years, Greece and Italy in particular have gotten very proactive about recovering the artifactsof bygone eras in foreign museums, and there have been several high profile lawsuits to bring this to international attention. This latest offense, though, as reported in the story linked above, is a bit much to handle.

I personally love seeing these artifacts - they are often unparraleled in beauty and craftsmanship, but I don't want to participate in the pillaging of another culture. In this editor's opinion, it's been long enough that affluent countries have taken advantage of their wealth and power to deplete the material culture of ancient societies that deserve to keep it for themselves, lest they forget from whence they came.

Worse is that the museum's are claiming ignorance to the crimes. Considering the relatively minor offenses that many people get put away for many years for, their claims ring particularly hollow. The ring of theft of Asian antiquity is well-documented and well known for many years.

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?