Auction house Christie's goes online

17 July 2006 16:13 GMT / By Amber Maitland

The venerable auction house, Christie's, is to compete with eBay, iCollector.com, and Artnet.com with live auctions online.

The company is teaming up with an online bidding company to develop technology for real-time video and sound from the sale room.

One of Christie's major competitors, Sotheby's, had announced a join venture with Amazon.com, but abandoned the plan long ago. It has sold via eBay about four times a year, according to a spokeswoman.

"Christie's LIVE will allow us to bring to an unlimited online audience the finest property, and those bidders will be able to participate in real-time in the excitement of the live sale room", said Edward Dolman, Christie's Chief Executive Officer, in a statement to Reuters.

A spokesperson told Reuters that the online auction initiative was inspired by the broad availability of broadband, which generates speeds fast enough to allow for real-time bidding.

Via Reuters

Full tags

Software, Online, Websites, Christies, eBay, Amazon