I had some of the same thoughts when I received the email this morning, i.e it’s seemingly promoting the seller’s auction listings regardless of real or fake.

It is Business,it’s what makes the World go around.

Vic

I agree that business is business, but the largest part of Bidamount’s business is collating examples of genuine Asian Antiques in one place that people can feel confident in their authenticity. One of their favourite saying is “95% of the Antiques online are fakes”. Not promoting fakes is their ‘thing’. 

I had that email too. I’m assuming that had I clicked on that email, anything I purchased would’ve been vetted and authenticated by Bidamount? I don’t know. So I didn’t click on it. 

Nic

The thing is,if you need someone to hold your hand for your purchases then you’re better off not buying.

Hi,

Rather uncalled for?

Did you wait until you’d attained complete mastery of the identification of Chinese porcelain before you bought anything?

Everyone learns by taking advice, listening to others and buying according to an experienced person’s recommendation. No on is born knowing this stuff nor do they learn it without any help from anyone.

If you don’t think anyone should ‘need’ Bidamount, and therefore do not want participate in its purpose of assisting people, why did you join?

I simply feel that it is unfair to constantly criticise Peter/Bidamount regarding some pieces that pass under the Radar.

The pleasure in collecting is tempered  by learning from your mistakes when you make the occasional bad purchase.

Vic

I felt the same way about the favoritism given to that seller also, not sure why, but it bugged me a little and i felt the 95% of antiques on ebay are fake felt exaggerated at that point. Did it come across as slightly hypocritical, was it a perversion of the ethics of the founding principles of bidamount. A betrayal maybe. I guess the claim that 95% of Antiques are fake on ebay is a direct attack on 95% of sellers on ebay.uk and we know that is not correct, and here we are promoting seller's that could fall on either side of that truncated histogram. 

I say truncated because the majority of sellers in UK for example are almost unintentionally very ethical, and perhaps that speaks of the high regard antiques are held in UK and in the USA that may well be very different. Simply compare the 2 Antiques road shows and you can see how different the approach is. It is no surprise bidamount is not featured on Ebay.uk as i would imagine the Uk Ebay manager  would not be as friendly to Peter's opinion that 95% of Antiques on Ebay.uk are fake. However I can say with a sneer that a much higher proportion of antiques sold on ebay.usa are much more likely to be fake and by God is that not just a slap in the face! 

Forgive my theatrics, i am just trying to find the chasm beneath:

About Email       

I checked my email too, I have emails from catawiki and several auction houses about new auctions, and from ebay with recommendations but i cannot see the email from bidamount.

I would agree with Shine, Of course bidamount can act just as all these other businesses providing there is an 'opt out' email option which is most likely because that is a box i always click and I did not get the email from biadamount 🙂  I would prefer the forum gets the main floor in this building but there is a business side to bidamount and  i guess we have to make some room for it. 

Dear All,

It seems to me that in this modern world there seems to be an attitude that people want something for nothing. The cost of providing an internet site of this size and scope would be substantial. If Bid Amount can recover  some of those costs good luck to them. Gotheborg run a fantastic  resource with a forum that until relatively recently was free. It having no commercial aspect at all they introduced a small annual fee needless to say traffic to the site and discussion in the forum has fallen away to a marked degree. 

We are very lucky to have this forum in many ways including the way it's members interact in such a polite and friendly way. Plus the good advice and informative comments. It's my opinion that an occasional email or other promotional communication is a small price to pay to keep the service going free to it's forum members.

Cheers

Michael

Posted by: Short Dong

I felt the same way about the favoritism given to that seller also, not sure why, but it bugged me a little and i felt the 95% of antiques on ebay are fake felt exaggerated at that point. Did it come across as slightly hypocritical, was it a perversion of the ethics of the founding principles of bidamount. A betrayal maybe. I guess the claim that 95% of Antiques are fake on ebay is a direct attack on 95% of sellers on ebay.uk and we know that is not correct, and here we are promoting seller's that could fall on either side of that truncated histogram. 

I say truncated because the majority of sellers in UK for example are almost unintentionally very ethical, and perhaps that speaks of the high regard antiques are held in UK and in the USA that may well be very different. Simply compare the 2 Antiques road shows and you can see how different the approach is. It is no surprise bidamount is not featured on Ebay.uk as i would imagine the Uk Ebay manager  would not be as friendly to Peter's opinion that 95% of Antiques on Ebay.uk are fake. However I can say with a sneer that a much higher proportion of antiques sold on ebay.usa are much more likely to be fake and by God is that not just a slap in the face! 

Forgive my theatrics, i am just trying to find the chasm beneath:

About Email       

I checked my email too, I have emails from catawiki and several auction houses about new auctions, and from ebay with recommendations but i cannot see the email from bidamount.

I would agree with Shine, Of course bidamount can act just as all these other businesses providing there is an 'opt out' email option which is most likely because that is a box i always click and I did not get the email from biadamount 🙂  I would prefer the forum gets the main floor in this building but there is a business side to bidamount and  i guess we have to make some room for it. 

 

The 95% fake on Ebay is true if the sellers from China that sell worldwide are included. I usually change the default to sellers located in Europe which considerably lowers the fake rate. I can only speak for Europe but think that most of the professional European dealers are honest. Still there are so many private people that list some trash from their attic as Ming vases, so the fake rate altogether might still be 50%. 

I think we are conflating two issues? There’s the issue of promotion and the issue of fakes. If a businesses chooses to charge for certain services, including promotions, that’s absolutely fine in my book. As others have said, if it improves the service and helps the company grow - everyone benefits. I don’t think this principle was being criticised. 

The issue of promoting fakes or sellers who knowingly sell fakes on a forum specifically set up with a mission to weed out the fakes and provide a safer buying experience is problematic. Especially when that seller is then being allowed a blanket promotion. Again, I will have to bow to others’ superior knowledge as to whether this is the case or not with this particular seller.

The criticism wasn’t about the odd fake slipping through - to err is human. I’m only clarifying that the criticism wasn’t about the promotion per se, it was about the ethics as regards this particular seller being allowed such a promotion and a question as to whether every single item in said promotion had been authenticated. I think this is a reasonable question considering the seller’s track record and the intended purpose of this site. 

As regards those of us who are new to collecting: without us there would be no need for Bidamount or Peter’s videos or, in fact, this forum. Presumably, those who’ve attained such a high degree of expertise would have no need of any of them? Even asking for a second opinion is, technically, asking someone to ‘hold your hand’ and even the most experienced person will do that from time to time?

I genuinely don’t understand why anyone would have disdain for those who lack the experience/confidence in buying Asian art, it is very sad and very odd on a site that was established principally with that goal in mind.Thankfully, those instances are still the minority, the general attitude is as patient and as helpful as ever. 

I’m sure it is very tedious and very frustrating to be dealing with inexperienced collectors asking about really basic stuff when your interest has evolved to such a point that these topics seem really stupid. But this will be a permanent element on this forum as new collectors join our ranks, so we can chose to welcome them and help as best we can, or humiliate them and drive them away. 

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to advise beginners to buy less and study more or to ‘always ask’ before bidding. This site is has always been welcoming and unendingly helpful and patient. I have enormous gratitude to everyone who has has helped me these past few months, I hope I express that enough every time I ask for advice.

Saying “If you need someone to hold you hand, you’re better off not buying” is the quickest way to kill people’s enthusiasm, it also nullifies the entire reason that this site exists. 

Nic

Actually Nic I suggest that you join Gotheborg.

It is a non commercial sIte and you can only ask questions about items that you personally own.

Bidamount is a good site and is obviously of a commercial nature.

With regard to paying for an opinion,an opinion is in many cases subjective and not definitive. 

Vic

First,

I want to apologize to anyone was bothered by the eMail the office sent out yesterday. The header "Latest News..etc" was supposed to say "Auction Reminder", we were trying a new template from our eMail provider Constant Contact and failed to save the change to the title. 

In the past when sellers have had larger sales ending, we have taken it upon ourselves to let folks know when the lots are closing. A few years ago when more sellers with large auctions were more common, we did them fairly often.  Including Ching-de-Command", "Qing-Period" etc. we would have included "Qing-Period" most recent sale had it not ended late Sunday night US time. 

Just to clear one thing up, we do not charge the sellers for doing them.  Just as we do not charge folks who send us information on current listings they have up who ask to be in the weekly News Letter. Many FORUM users sell on eBay can attest to this.  This includes items in the "Featured" section.  We're happy to have a look and include any item from any seller who has things we like. 

As for this site, or the Gotheborg site or any site with considerable content, a few thoughts. 

The annual costs of running them is perhaps greater than many realize.  Once a site goes beyond the "out of the box" kind of setup, everything that runs it in the background does require considerable annual expenses, including hours of work each week. 

For example, BIDAMOUNT has built into it over 50 different commercial plugins.  All doing different things in addition to the commercial platform it's been built off of, a commercial version of GENESIS (the sites main template). Most of the plugins have been bought and require annual subscriptions for updates and support. This also requires a fair amount of additional custom coding and CSS etc. to avoid crashes and conflicts.  BIDAMOUNT is on it's own cloud server as typical standard hosting arrangements offer woefully inadequate capacity.  For example, an average entire website uses around 100 to 150 Megabytes.  The average medium size commercial site requires no more than 5 gigbytes for the entire site. The BIDAMOUNT FORUM alone has over 17 gigabytes of images and data on it as of today. THen we have services like CONSTANT CONTACT for the weekly eMails about the NEWS Letter page, which also isn't free and costs around $750 per year.  And of course Hosted security software, to guard everyone's email addresses and site content. 

We are happy to do all of this, its fun for us as are doing the video(s) each week.  

Gotheborg and BIDAMOUNT are very different sites in lots of ways, as many know. Both do require revenue to function, Jan-Erik and I have communicated about it over the years. 

He's opted to handle it by annual subscriptions of $29 to $100 a year for users, and that's very fair. I am a Sponsor and don't mind a bit helping out.  BIDAMOUNT earns a little each month from Affiliate links paid by eBay and CATAWIKI which avoids the need to charge users.  We also have the newer services we've added including the Second Opinion arrangement on eBay. This is something they approached us on and was easy enough to accommodate.  While it is not available yet outside the US, it is on all items visible in the USA for listings from all over the world including the UK and EU.  If it is a successful program, it will likely be expanded.  

I hope this helps to fill in some of the blanks, I do sincerely apologize if anyone was bothered by yesterday's erroneously titled eMail. 

I thought also now would be a good time to let folks know a bit more about the site and some insight into how it functions.  

Best to all...and for allowing me the opportunity go over this. 

Peter

Hello, Peter

I want to thank you for this site and the video you make the learning experience is priceless 

so keep up the good work your doing. John

Dear Peter,

thank you for explaining all the trouble and efforts that are behind running a site like this, that actually one could imagine, even if not expert like myself.

But a question, the one raised by Nic, remains.

Chamberlain DO sell fakes. Joanie’s house of etc etc DO sell fakes. Is it correct to keep them in great evidence compared to smaller but honest sellers? I too joined the Forum with great acknowledgment for its task, of giving a yet free, reliable judgement on what on sale on ebay. Really notable.

But when it is evident that, for example, the two above mentioned sellers do sell fakes intentionally, and not by mistake, then at least an advice to them is in my opinion expected. Something like “beware, if you do it again, I will not support you so much anymore”.

Their behavior is not excusable considering the enormous monthly income that they have. The fact that Chamberlain did try several times to sell the same fake Ming jar, is really miserable. Does he really need to realize those 100 or 200 dollars, facing what he had from the rest? I really have no words other than miserable. I have the garage full of bad purchases, as any collector has. But nobody can say that I did try to sell one of them as genuine or with a description clearly made in the manner of fooling the unexperienced.

This is my opinion, provided that the aiming of the site is to highlight the true from the false.

I would take the opportunity to say also what I think about the commercial success of those “supermarkets of antiquities”. In my opinion who should also be really blamed are the buyers. It is totally incomprehensible to me how one could think that antiques should be normally bought at supermarkets. Really not understandable, but it seems that the great majority of ebay’s buyers are thinking so.

Antiques are not beer, or biscuits, or hot dogs. If I am hunting for antiques, I go to smaller antique shops, flea markets, and so no, not to the supermarket at the corner of the block.

And Nic, in my opinion Vic’s comment was indeed aimed to suggest the unexperienced to increase their knowledge. To not buy blind.

Regards

Giovanni