E-Photo
Issue #2  5/20/1999
 
Latest eBay Rumours

By Alex Novak

While we're on the subject of Swann, the hot rumour (I haven't gotten out of the habit of using British spelling yet) in London was that they were the next target of eBay and that conversations were underway.

No confirmation from either source yet. I don't know if this is just a shot in the dark or there fire with this smoke, but the sources seem quite emphatic.

No offense to Swann, but I still don't understand with eBay's multi-billion dollar war chest why they just don't buy Christie's with its international and broad market expertise. They could pick up the house for about $6 billion, a literal drop in the bucket for ebay right now. Perhaps LiveBid, the Amazon.com competitor who attempted to buy B&B, helping to precipitate that sale to eBay, will.

Novak has over 47 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formally board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.