David held down the fort last week while I traveled to San Antonio on business. Needless to say, I visited the antiques/collectibles part of town on Broadway and Houston streets near the historic Alamo. There was an excellent selection of goods, and I picked up an Encylopedia of Collectibles from the 1970s in one of the shops.
The Menger Hotel, next to the Alamo, is a real "Wild West" hotel. There were display cases in the lobby with antiques and some ephemera from the 1800s, including ledgers that guests had signed! Some famous guests that stayed at the Menger include Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Mae West, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne.
It was a long plane trip, so I brought a book with me. "Sotheby's - Bidding for Class" by Robert Lacey outlines the history of auctions going back to the 1700s. I highly recommend this book. It reminded me that the true "auctioneers" of the electronic age are the online auction sellers, not the auction sites themselves.
Before going to San Antonio, David and I were guests on the Collecting Channel's "Ask the Experts" on June 6th. A transcript of the live chat can be found at http://beta.collectingchannel.com/?page=real/chatTrans2. We enjoyed the chance to chat about auctions and thank our host Ron McCoy and his excellent support team.
Newsflash, our daily email newsletter (also free), has been breaking some interesting stories lately. We were the first to report on the TIAS pricing study that showed that their sellers were realizing lower prices on eBay in the antiques and collectibles areas.
We were also the first to report that the Eppraisals service run by auctioneer Leslie Hindman had stopped operating. If you don't already subscribe to Newsflash, you can sign up by sending a blank email to: auctionflash-subscribe@topica.com
I received several interesting letters from readers in the past two weeks. They raise some excellent points. Be sure and read them at the end of the newsletter.
Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and AuctionBytes.com and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @auctionbytes and send news tips to ina@auctionbytes.com.
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