Auctioneers axe staff as eBay hits trade

Auctioneer Dunbar Sloane Snr with a classic photo album from 1916. Picture / Dean Purcell

Auction house Dunbar Sloane is cutting staff and restructuring its Auckland business as online trading hits business.

Owner Dunbar Sloane Snr said four jobs would be lost with the downsizing of the Auckland premises, which was established in 2000. That will leave just Sloane Snr and his son Dunbar Sloane Jr in Auckland.

They will continue to receive and catalogue fine art and Maori artefacts and will hold three or four Auckland auctions a year.

Other items, such as rare books, jewellery and antiques, will be sent to Wellington, where the auction house has operated since 1918.

"[Business] has slowed slightly because of things like eBay and TradeMe. We're scaling back a bit," Sloane Snr said, adding that the rise of digital cameras had also hurt traditional auction houses. "All the antique dealers in this country are suffering," he said.

"The auction houses and antique dealers overseas are suffering a little bit from eBay. People are listing and selling stuff completely themselves, bypassing the auctioneer and the antique dealer completely.

"And all that stuff on eBay leaves this country and is normally sold to Americans. So it makes less and less stock in this country."

Sloane Snr said it would be more economical for him to send the lesser value items to Wellington and concentrate on the higher-value artefacts and art in Auckland.

He said TradeMe was also active in the market but that sellers were unlikely to put anything very valuable on the site.

"I think the advent of the digital camera has helped them tremendously because people can [list] things for virtually no cost now," Sloane Snr said.