Vietato, you should inform Find Art Information organisation, that they should update the date E Steele was born and when he died on their records.



Having done some research online, I found that that Edwin Steele (E Steele) was born in 1803 and died in 1871. He was the son of Thomas Steele.



In Rockingham china and porcelain patter book, states that Edwin Steele was a painter and enamaller at this factory, and he was the son of Thomas Steel who was also an artist at the factory before his son.



Thomas Steel moved back to Staffordshire to work at the Minton factory, taking his son with him and they lived in Stoke on Trent. As there is an Edwin J. Steele who was born in 1861 in Stoke on Trent and who died in 1933 in Birmingham, which fits with the dates on the paintings of his son.



Teresa Coutinho

I believe you are absolutely right about the fake paintings they sell in auction houses online. I couldn´t otherwise understand that paintings by first class painters such as E Steele, are at so low prices on the Bid.

Website.







Teresa Coutinho

I just got an email from INVALUABLE (!) with the headline ´´Art from 888 Auctions´´.



I thought for a moment it would be a warning, maybe a report of a police investigation, but no, the email is advocating an auction on July 5th, and it showcases seven modern works which are all fakes.



The top lot is this Andy Warhol:

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/andy-warhol-american-1928-1987-mixed-media-33644C1BA1?utm_source=house&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=targetedexclusive&utm_content=888070218 



It has a certificate from an unknown art service in Toulouse, France, which apparently had a stamp made with a wrong ZIP code [:D]



Regards,

Vietato



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I am webmaster on this: Art Talk - Under The Surface 

I got this email advertising this auction just before, amongst the listings I see lots of big name ummm....



https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/63089301_pablo-picasso-pencil-on-paper-9-x-55-probstudy 

Yes ... Carstens Galleries was added to the list of fake auctioneers a year ago.



____________________

I recommend the Art forum  at BidtoArt.com



I am webmaster on this: Art Talk - Under The Surface 

With fakes sold shill bidding serves mainly the purpose of another tool to give them extra credibility in the eyes of general public.

There is no need to shill bid on eBay as it has the perfectly legal option of adding a hidden reserve price. I didn´t ever put one myself neither did I ever bothered to bid on auctions with such - that´s another story of personal preferences and/or perceptions, but it´s there and available to those who wants it nevertheless.

I´ve been selling on eBay nearly from the time of its invention and tried different ways changing and adjusting along with eBay changing as a marketplace itself. Nowadays it´s much more of an online retail place rather than auction - what it used to be originally. So for the past 6-7 years my strategy is rather simple: first I list an item as an auction with a starting bid of what is the minimum I´m willing to sell it for, and if it doesn´t sell I just re-list it in my eBay Store with on average 30% mark up, but with a ´´make an offer´´ option, so I would accept an offer at or above my initial auction starting bid.

90% of the listings don´t sell on the first try as an auction listing but would sell later on as a store item, so it tells you pretty much how that marketplace has changed, what kind of a buyer comes there. Therefore you need to adjust according to economics 101: demand determines supply, and play along.

BTW, I´m considering now on giving up on listing in auction format altogether.

quote:

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There is no need to shill bid on eBay as it has the perfectly legal option of adding a hidden reserve price. I didn´t ever put one myself neither did I ever bothered to bid on auctions with such - that´s another story of personal preferences and/or perceptions, but it´s there and available to those who wants it nevertheless.

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What you´re talking about there re the Ebay ´´reserve´´ facility, Merray, might be a legal option, but it´s far from a feasible or functional option. It costs an arm and a leg for having the temerity to want to protect your own property and all anyone actually buys with that is a ball and chain deterrent to actually selling! As you say yourself, you wouldn´t bid on anything with the Ebay version of a reserve and neither do I and neither does anyone else. Because the critical point there is that it ISN´T HIDDEN! It should be hidden. It might work if it was hidden, but it isn´t. Ebay insists on advertising that there´s a reserve rather than having a system where bids can be taken off the wall up to it as per normal practice in standard auctions.



And I agree with you re the necessity to have to adjust to supplying what the buyers are demanding. Unfortunately that runs even harder into the awfulness of the reality of the inadequacy of the majority of buyers´ ability (even re those who look at art) to distinguish between the sublime and the grotesque, let alone between the good and the better. ´´Good´´ doesn´t sell, because it isn´t recognised. The only thing that reliably sells is the perception of a ´´bargain´´! And that´s when you get to the utter stupidity demonstrated by the idiots deceived into buying the likes of the worthless fake Picassos that seem to be a ´´bargain´´ at £1500 and the mass perception that genuine art ought to be the same level of ´´bargain´´. And that means ´´real´´ doesn´t sell at all. It might be Economics 101 but being supposed to have to pander/cater only to the ´´bargain´´ demanders is soul destroying! But it´s why all the fakes are proliferating.

I agree with most you say Job, and precisely when I figured out those things myself I simply stopped running the $1 starting bid auctions and start them only at the price I´m actually willing to sell at. That being said, there is more to psychology of the sale and figuring the other part helped me properly adjust to new realities. :)

Like you´ve said ´´people are looking for bargain´´, what it means generally they are not buying art to enjoy the artwork but rather themselves! It´s the need to pat yourself on the shoulder thinking how smart you are, how good of an eye you´ve got, how much better you are than others. And the same way as with the low starting... and ending auctions I can provide them with those feelings by letting them ´´bargain hard´´ with me on the price and win. :)

It is even better for me and for them in many ways. For me that since making an offer is a responsible move, they tend to educate themselves better beginning with the artist´s auction record to know precisely what should be considered a bargain here. And for them besides feeling less pressured, more in control, perhaps the fact of ´´outbarganing´´ a knowledgeable man, makes the victory feel even sweeter than snatching something from an unsuspecting loser. And although this does not apply to all of the buyer categories out there, there are plenty of those you can do business with towards mutual benefits.

But of course the market would be tremendously greater should the fakes be taken out the equation, they simply grab way too much money off the table overall. That´s also economics 101. 😞

There is no way, as I understand, to control shill bidding on Live Auctioneers since they are supposedly run parallel live auctions so they are totally allowed to enter themselves bids from the ´´floor´´, ´´absentee bids´´, etc. The irony is that I often here complains/suspicions from the people on the floor that the online bids are shill bidding as well. :)

So I guess it could serve auctioneers both ways.

I shouldn´t have said unsold. I meant that they do ´´sell´´ but then just reappear over and over. It´s a Florida auction house (if you even want to call it that; it´s mentioned in the list above actually) that does this.



I have also witnessed while watching a liveauctioneers video feed an auctioneer asking the person controlling the online bidding what bids he has and the person replying with obviously the highest amount of the absentee bid that was left. This was definitely what happened because there was no activity or bids that caused the item to go higher with pre-auction bids. This is the reason why I´d never consider leaving an absentee bid ever.