Everything at Auction Online Now
Auctions have been around for a long time and we all know the stories of slaves being auctioned right up till the eighteenth century in the United States of America.
It goes back a lot further than that and can easily be traced to ancient Greeks over two and a half thousand years ago. Humankind has a history of barbarism and it perhaps is no particular surprise that all these early examples of auctioneering should involve human traffic treated simply as objects.
The Greeks auctioned young captured women and before we all pretend to be shocked let us remember the misery of human traffic across nations today in young girls and boys sold into prostitution to the highest bidder.
Later on the Romans not only sold captured people into slavery but also came up with the idea of holding public auctions of captured spoils that could include every conceivable item from gold, jewellery and other property and use the proceeds to pay the soldiers.
Many army commanders spread as they were with their troops across the whole of Europe would lose contact with Rome and not receive the pay due to the troops. The simple solution was to auction the proceeds of the sacking of every town and village in their path and for this reason a number of wealthy merchants would accompany the soldiers always waiting for a good deal.
These parasites had the coins the general needed to pay the troops and would buy other valuables at a fraction of the true value. It is not difficult to imagine a group of these men fixing prices amongst each other before the auction.
Auctions really came into their own only recently at the beginning of the twentieth century up till today.
Instead of dusty old provincial salerooms the latest and most popular way to auction goods is with online auctions.
Yet again the internet has learnt to surprise us with another innovative use. Internet shopping only began a decade or two ago in earnest and now the latest is online auctions for anything imaginable at great prices.
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martin bows Find out more about online auctions at http://www.bidvid.com/ |