Bonhams and Butterfield was a large American auction house, founded in 1865 by William Butterfield in San Francisco.
It was purchased in 1999 from Bernard Osher by online auctioneer eBay for $260 million. [1]
In 2002, it was acquired from eBay by British auctioneer Bonhams and operated under the name Bonhams & Butterfields for about ten years. It now just goes by Bonhams.
A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with said person or organization, or have been paid to do so. Shills can carry out their operations in the areas of media, journalism, marketing, politics, sports, confidence games, cryptocurrency, or other business areas. A shill may also act to discredit opponents or critics of the person or organization in which they have a vested interest.
An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition exist and are described in the section about different types. The branch of economic theory dealing with auction types and participants' behavior in auctions is called auction theory.
An online auction is an auction held over the internet and accessed by internet connected devices. Similar to in-person auctions, online auctions come in a variety of types, with different bidding and selling rules.
Billpoint was the name of a person-to-person money transfer service founded in 1998, and purchased in 1999 by online auctioneer eBay.
Bonhams is a privately owned international auction house and one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. It was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son & Neale. This brought together two of the four surviving Georgian auction houses in London, Bonhams having been founded in 1793, and Phillips in 1796 by Harry Phillips, formerly a senior clerk to James Christie.
Dean V. Kruse is an American former auctioneer. He is also the former owner and CEO of Kruse International. Kruse started working in the local auction business founded by his father, Russell W. Kruse, and soon became the company's president. Known to many as the "Dean of Auctioneers," Kruse was once a well-respected member of the collector car hobby.
Porto Ercole is an Italian town located in the municipality of Monte Argentario, in the Province of Grosseto, Tuscany. It is one of the two major towns that form the township, along with Porto Santo Stefano. Its name means "Port Hercules". It is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia.
Laurence Shurtliff was an American music executive and roadie. He was President of Grateful Dead Productions, Inc., from 1976, the year that the Grateful Dead incorporated, until the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995. He also was the Grateful Dead's "head roadie" and equipment manager during and prior to those years, and began his first role with the band as tour truck driver in 1967.
Arthur Hill Gilbert was an American Impressionist painter, notable as one of the practitioners of the California-style. Today, he is remembered for his large, colorful canvases depicting meadows and groves of trees along the state's famed 17 Mile Drive. Gilbert was part of the group of American impressionist artists who lived and painted in the artists' colony scene in California at Carmel and Laguna Beach during the 1920s and 1930s.
Auction software is application software, that can either be deployed on a desktop, on a web server or as a smart contract on a blockchain virtual machine. This software is used by auctioneers and participants of online auctions such as eBay. Smart contracts replace an auctioneer's server, if the auctioneer is not trusted.
Kruse International was an auction firm founded by Russell Kruse in Auburn, Indiana, in 1952. The company began as a local auction company selling real estate, farms and personal property run by Kruse and his sons Dean, Dennis and Daniel. The company held its first collector car auction in Auburn on Labor Day in 1971; the Labor Day auction became an annual event and grew to become the largest collector car auction in the world. After the success of this auction, the Kruses were asked by Tom Barrett to have a sale in Scottsdale, Arizona, the next January. This was the first annual sales that continues today. The Kruses were the first to sell a car for a documented $1 million in cash — a 1934 Duesenberg Model SJ La Grande long wheelbase dual-cowl phaeton. The Duesenberg was sold to Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza and then owner of the Detroit Tigers.
Skinner was an American auction house headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts. It has been among the world's leading auction houses for antiques and fine art.
Walter Potter was an English taxidermist noted for his anthropomorphic dioramas featuring mounted animals mimicking human life, which he displayed at his museum in Bramber, Sussex, England. The exhibition was a well-known and popular example of "Victorian whimsy" for many years, even after Potter's death; however, enthusiasm for such entertainments waned in the twentieth century, and his collection was finally dispersed in 2003.
John Sandon is a British expert and prolific author on ceramics and glass. He is best known as an expert on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, which he joined in 1985.
Jon Baddeley is a fine art auctioneer, an authority on scientific instruments and collectables, a broadcaster and an author.
Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA) is the first auction house to specialize in 20th century Modern art and design. Founded by Peter Loughrey in 1992, LAMA especially champions Modern and Contemporary works by California and West Coast artists and designers.
Phillips, formerly known as Phillips the Auctioneers and briefly as Phillips de Pury, is a British auction house. It was founded in London in 1796, and has head offices in London and in New York City. In 2022 it was owned by the Mercury Group, a Russian luxury goods company.
Charles Cooper Henderson was a British painter of horses and coaches.
Charlie Ross is a British antiques expert, presenter and auctioneer, known for regular appearances on several BBC Antique programmes.