Reports from the Art Newspaper and the Wall Street Journal say Amazon is making plans to sell fine art online. The reports say the company is working with galleries around the U.S.—perhaps more than 100—to act as an online art market and collect a commission on the sales.Amazon tried this once before in 2001, but in partnership with Sotheby's. It was very successful, so much in fact that Sotheby's decided to go on their own, broke their contract with Amazon (and paid them a ton of money to do so) and was selling about a million dollars a day at one point.
Ebay noticed this and tried to start doing the same thing via a short-lived venture titled Ebay Premiere; they failed miserably.
Then Ebay started courting Sotheby's and the fools decided to partner up with Ebay and the whole entire thing tanked in record time, forever poisoning the well for online fine art auctions.
The formula for selling fine art online demands a legitimizing name (such as Sotheby's or Christie's or MoMA or such a recognizable "art name") - it fails miserably anytime anyone else tries it.
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