Boris Baich of Auction Brokers LLC said the consignor of Gauguin paintings that were pulled from eBay Live Auctions on Sunday decided on Monday not to use eBay to sell the paintings.

Auction Brokers had listed the paintings, with an estimate of between $5 million to $10 million, on eBay Live Auctions using iCollector's technology. A website in Denmark called Artfakes.dk questioned the authenticity of the paintings over the weekend. iCollector pulled the auction on Sunday (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m04/i11/s00).

Julian Ellison of LiveAuctioneers said he was stunned last month when he saw the Gauguin listed and sent an email to the head of eBay Live Auctions. iCollector and LiveAuctioneers are rivals who have met in court (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m02/i15/s07).

Ellison said, "Who in their right mind would want to sell two paintings like that outside of the four to five best auction houses in the world?"

Ellison said eBay polices itself. There are occasions when he is contacted about an auction item by an authority in the field. He forwards those messages to the auction houses consigning the items, and "99.9 percent of the time auction houses react in the best possible way."

Baich sent a file of scanned documents to AuctionBytes on Monday that he said are the papers for authentication and ownership, and said the Gauguins had not been offered to any other auction house.

eBay has not returned a call seeking comment.