ALLENTOWN (AP) A moment of silence, please, for the good old auction.
Oh, they’re still around. But the in-person auction, with its traditional patter and gavel-banging and crowd buzz, has been giving way in recent years to online business a change accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, which, according to one study, has advanced the pace of online commerce by two years.
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In the “before times,” as the prepandemic era is sometimes known, auction houses hosted in-person events at their headquarters and at properties being liquidated in estate sales, and carried the auctions online, too.
Gathering restrictions put a crimp in the model. But, just as religious services and business meetings could migrate fully online, so could auctions. For buyers, it’s as easy to bid on a grandfather clock or a Babe Ruth baseball card online as in person easier, really. And, for auction houses, the virtual world provides an immeasurably larger pool of potentia
Going, going, not quite gone: How pandemic changed auctions
DANIEL PATRICK SHEEHAN, The (Allentown) Morning Call
April 24, 2021
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ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) A moment of silence, please, for the good old auction.
Oh, they’re still around. But the in-person auction, with its traditional patter and gavel-banging and crowd buzz, has been giving way in recent years to online business a change accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, which, according to one study, has advanced the pace of online commerce by two years.
Advertisement
Skip in 3s
In the “before times,” as the prepandemic era is sometimes known, auction houses hosted in-person events at their headquarters and at properties being liquidated in estate sales, and carried the auctions online, too.
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