Billy, I never knew eBay had a transaction, selling a Picasso for just under $2mil last year.
Btw
Do you list yourself on eBay as "golfpoorly"?
Short eBay with max pain of 159.These aren't idiots on eBay they're addicts.
>NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
May 9, 2000
On April 28, a California man who uses the handle "golfpoorly" put a half-dozen items up for sale on eBay, the online auction company. Along with an unopened roll of twine, a never inflated basketball, a Mexican voodoo mask, a Netgear network card and a pewter frame, he offered a "great big wild abstract painting" that he said was bought years ago at a garage sale in Berkeley and has a small hole inflicted by a son wielding a plastic tricycle.
The opening bid for each of the items was a quarter.
By last night, after 95 offers, bidding for the painting -- which on a computer screen looks vaguely like a landscape swathed in red, orange and a pinkish accent -- had soared to $135,805. When the auction closed at 6:49 p.m., a man named Rob Keereweer in the Netherlands was the high bidder.
The unusual run-up was fueled by speculation that the painting might be a 1952 work by Richard Diebenkorn, the California painter known for his sublime use of color in abstract and representational works.
The six-figure sale is not only one of the highest prices paid online for art, it is also a powerful testimony to the ability of the Internet to ignite a sales frenzy, even for expensive items that may or may not be what people think they are.
"I'm still astonished that anyone would pay that much for something they hadn't seen," said John Elderfield, the chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and an expert on Diebenkorn.
A painting by Diebenkorn, who died in 1993, could be worth millions. The record price at auction was set in November 1998, when his 1959 painting "Horizon: Ocean Park" sold at Sotheby's for $3.9 million.
But eBay does not vouch for the authenticity of anything people sell on its site. It considers the deals to be private transactions. And, for now at least, no one knows for sure whether "golfpoorly's" painting is by Diebenkorn.
"The palette is right, and the signature is right on," said Will Ameringer, a New York dealer who has sold works by Diebenkorn. "It's either a good fake or the real thing." Other experts agreed, but they and Ameringer said they could not give definitive opinions about its authenticity without seeing the painting.
Which is impossible.
Michael Kaiser, a private art dealer in Medford, Ore., bid the painting up to $128,600 on Sunday but then changed his mind. He withdrew his offer after the seller, who, according to Kaiser, is a lawyer who lives in the Sacramento area, refused to let him see the painting. "It made me suspicious when he would not let me see it when I'm making the effort to drive five hours down there," said Kaiser, who added that he "buys a lot of art online."
"Golfpoorly," responding to an e-mail message, declined to comment, citing the advice of his lawyer, the possibility of theft and tax consequences. He signed the message "Ken." The name associated with the e-mail address is K.A. Walton, and a phone message left at the home of Kenneth Walton in Sacramento was not returned. That left open questions, including why he did not withdraw the painting once people began attributing it to Diebenkorn in favor of selling it through the established art market, where it could presumably attract a much higher price.
But "golfpoorly" told his story of the painting online when he put it up for sale. He bought it, he said, before he got married. "My wife has never let me keep it in the house," he explained -- though he "always kind of liked it" -- so he decided to sell.
"Golfpoorly" said the painting was 2 feet 11 inches by 3 feet 11 inches, and noted that the hole was about an inch and a quarter long and "would be easy to fix with duct tape."
He never said it was a Diebenkorn, but along with a picture of the entire painting -- incorrectly oriented vertically, which he noted in his posting -- he posted a close-up of the hole. The signature, "R.D. '52," was easily discernible in the close-up, and it stirred up the interest and skepticism as well.
In the early '50s, Diebenkorn made a series of abstract works in successive locations for which the cycles are named -- Albuquerque, N.M., Urbana, Ill., and Berkeley. The Berkeley series began around 1953, so an unknown 1952 work would not be unreasonable. The colors in "golfpoorly's" painting match those Diebenkorn used in his Berkeley series.
A Berkeley painting from 1955 sold for $1.8 million at Sotheby's in May 1998, and others have sold privately for about $1 million, dealers said.
"Golfpoorly" said he was surprised by all the fuss. On Sunday, he added information to the eBay posting that apologized for not answering all the inquiries he had and said, "We're freaked out by all of this, and because of the high price this painting is going for (WOW!!!!) I contacted an attorney." The posting continued, "This painting is sold in the same manner as the other items I am selling on eBay, and requires full payment within 7 days of the auction, in advance of delivery to the buyer, and is sold as described in the auction description, without representation as to authorship or authenticity."
"Golfpoorly" has sold items on eBay before, and those who have bought from him rate him well. On his eBay ID card, 13 people rated him highly. "Charged me less for shipping than he quoted," wrote one whose handle is "cheesesix." "A really nice guy." Another, a self-employed, self-described computer geek in Los Angeles who claims to buy online all the time, said the espresso machine he bought from "golfpoorly" for about $280 was "very good and honestly described."
Such testimonials undoubtedly enhance his credibility, but they are hardly relevant to whether this painting is an authentic Diebenkorn.
As online auctions have gathered force in the past few years, numerous sites have begun to offer art. Those related to the art world usually have some standards. Artnet.com, for example, says that "All lots have been vetted by reputable dealers and compared with existing auction results," while Sotheby's guarantees the authenticity of works it sells on both sothebys.com and sothebys.amazon.com.
According to Art and Auction magazine, the highest price on an art site transaction was $168,000 for a 1959 watercolor by Lucio Fontana, which sold on artnet.com in 1999.
EBay does not keep track of transactions -- there were more than 53 million listings in the last quarter alone, a spokesman said -- but it believes that a Picasso sold for just under $2 million last year.
As for "golfpoorly," his other five auction items fetched a total of $43.75. |
