Live Auctions is a proprietary technology developed by eBay which allows online bidders to participate in the excitement of a traditional auction by transmitting online bids from a user’s home or office computer to the bidding floor of an auction house.
Initially developed for eBay Premier’s high-end arts and antiques market, eBay Live Auctions is now available in twelve unique categories, including automobiles, wine and specialty auctions. In addition, Live Auctions will now be featured from the eBay home page or directly at www.ebayliveauctions.com. Items showcased on eBay Live Auctions come from authorized auction house members. All Live Auctions items are covered by the traditional guarantee offered by many auction houses.
“We are in a unique position at eBay to be able to provide a powerful medium for the traditional auction industry -- whether fine art auctions, wine, industrial equipment, real estate or autos,” said Geoff Iddison, general manager of eBay Premier. "Live Auctions will open up the traditional auction marketplace to a wider audience and make it possible for any auction house to sell items in eBay’s growing marketplace."
Since its roll out in September 2000, eBay Live Auctions technology has shown increasing success in generating strong bidding activity. To date, auction houses that have used Live Auctions technology have seen twenty percent of their lots sell to Internet bidders. Overall, thirty percent of their lots have received bids from Internet bidders.
The highest lot sold through eBay Live Auctions so far was a famous painting by Norman Rockwell called “The Dugout” which sold for $345,000 by Mastronet’s Robert Edward Auctions. Additionally, at the recent Butterfield’s Marilyn Monroe sale, 60% of the lots sold to bidders online.
A sampling of Live Auctions coming soon include:
by Butterfields, April 23 at 1:00 PST
Fine & Rare Wines
by Mid Atlantic, April 29 at 10:00:00 PST
The Spring 2001 Space Memorabilia Auction
by Superior Gallery, May 5 at 10:00 PST
Details and instructions on placing bids using eBay Live Auctions are available directly at www.ebayliveauctions.com. Bidders must first sign up for each live auction online as a registered eBay user, and comply with the auction house’s bidder approval requirements. Before placing bids using Live Auctions, users can browse the catalogues on the site. Users can place bids before and during the sale. Once received, these bids are sent to the salesroom during the traditional auction.
About eBay Inc.
eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY; http://www.ebay.com) is the world’s online trading community. Founded in 1995, eBay created a powerful marketplace for the sale of goods and services by a passionate community of individuals and small businesses. On any given day, there are millions of items listed on the site across thousands of categories. eBay enables trade on a local, national and international basis with local sites in 60 markets in the United States and country-specific sites in the Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. With the acquisition of Half.com in July 2000, eBay’s community now benefits from a marketplace combining traditional auction-style trading and Half.com’s set-price trading.