history
We are here to create history, not repeat it.
Chantelle Renee
Cole Hector acknowledges the importance of the Internet in offering many resources to any collector: item identification tools, pricing guides, catalogs, trading platforms, collector clubs, and forums.
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A Short History of Collecting and Auctions
COLLECTING
Collecting is a practice with a very old cultural history that goes back as far as the 3rd millennium BCE.
For millennia, collectors were mostly kings and queens; the first coin collector is said to have been Augustus, the first Roman emperor.
Caesar Augustus (63 BCE – 14 CE)
We had to wait for the 15th century to see the significant efforts to collect art by private patronage, expanding a different form of collecting: private collectors and collections. Lorenzo de’ Medici, patron of scholars, artists, and poets, is the best example of this new era. Lorenzo’s court included artists such as Andrea del Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449 – 1492)
The involvement of larger numbers of people in collecting activities came with prosperity and increased leisure for some in the later 19th century in industrial countries.
In the 20th century, collecting was extended to the common citizen.
Anyone could be a collector, even a child.
Two boys examine stamps.
AUCTIONS
According to historians, auctions were developed by the Assyrians around the 2nd millennium BCE. Trading was used to sell fish at the best prices offered by interested parties.
The Romans also used the auction to liquidate their own property. The most outstanding auction occurred in 193 CE, when the entire Roman Empire was put on the auction block by the Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard first killed Pertinax, the emperor, and then announced that the highest bidder could claim the entire empire. Didius Julianus outbid everyone, an act that initiated a brief civil war. Didius was then beheaded two months later when Septimius Severus conquered Rome.
Septimius Severus (145 – 211)
In the Middle Ages, the auctioneer profession was established in several countries, and the auctioneer bailiffs emerged as civil servants appointed by kings to evaluate, negotiate, and sell goods left by those who died or were executed by justice.
Private auction houses emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries; the world’s oldest auction house, Stockholms Auktionsverk, was founded in 1674 in Sweden. Sotheby’s is the world’s second-largest auction house, having held its inaugural auction in 1744. Christie’s, the world’s largest auction house, was founded in 1766.
A late 19th century auction
painted by Albert Bettannier.
With the emergence of the Internet, online auctions have developed.
Auctioneers can solicit bids from a wide range of buyers on a much larger variety of commodities than was previously practical.
Innumerable online auctions have appeared since then.
