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A friend of mine who owns a gallery on Hollywood road in Hong Kong, was recently discussing with me about getting online. They deal in Han, Tang, Ming porcelain/terra cotta etc and while they have a website they really don't do any online business. Since most of us here are either buyers or sellers, I am wondering whats everyone's impressions are on which site would be the ones to consider. From my impression it seems that the main ones are:

- trocadero.com (seems everyone is there)
- eBay (we all know the issues with ebay)
- antiques.com (seems up and coming)

For sellers, which one do you think offers the best traffic, fees etc. For buyers - which site would you normally go to?

Buyers go to where what they particularly want is, including auction houses besides those on your list. More than one site may have one type item or offer other conditions buyer want.

For vendors there is no "one best." Each site has own conditions, and vendor should look at the sales records for items vendor usually want sell as well as site terms, payment options and fees.

Good luck,
Cal

Trocadaro seems to be where most sellers are (lots of Han, Tang and Mind dynasty pottery and artifacts). It seems whenever I search for these items multiple trocadaro shops come up in the image results. So it seems there is traffic. But then again maybe its crowed and that could be a bad thing.

With ebay I am worried that everyone will assume everything is fake (since most of whats on ebay IS fake). I just did a search for "han dynasty" and my god! tons of absolute utter garbage came up or people selling 90% fakes with one or two real items in the mix. Love the China based sellers who are essentially selling fakes or in the case of real items, basically listing on ebay that the engage in smuggling... ;)

I suppose another question (which I need to answer) is where are the buyers of this sort of thing going to be looking.....

If you are using google, remember that some vendors make deals with google to put their results first. The order of search results does not necessarily have anything to do with site popularity.

Good luck,
Cal

There is a new way to buy antiques at regional auctions all round the world. It is through artfact.com . I just bought an article from a french auction through it will see if it is genuine or not when it arrives. Most concerning is some of there cheap fakes get purposely imported into Western auction houses and sold as genuine to the unsuspecting at high prices. As with ebay buying at regional auction houses have some degree of risk and one has to have a keen eye.

I've just discovered this art forum. Excellent venue for those of us who love asian art and enjoy learning. I'm a relative newbie to this as I just started to buy things when I moved to new york about 15 years ago and bought some relatively new huanghuali pieces from a dealer who has now relocated to china. Who knows if the pieces i have are real or not? I should have come to this forum first!

I like trocadero but also 1stdibs.com has a nice offering but not as extensive. I find vendors on 1stdibs more on the high end. Ebay has to be taken with a grain of salt. Many things are not true antiques and are more likely "vintage". The only ones I enjoy looking and buying from on ebay is Hartmann (based in nyc). They have a nice vetted selection of items.

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