The world's three largest auction houses are Christie's, Sotheby's and Bonhams. The world's largest online auction site is EBay.

Sotheby's, was founded by Samuel Baker , who held the first-ever sale under his own name on March 11, 1744.

Bonhams was founded in 1793 by Thomas Dodd, a renowned antique print dealer and Walter Bonham, a book specialist.

In 1766, James Christie opened his London auction house and launched the world's first fine art auctioneers.

EBay is a relatively new auction house that holds online auctions, allowing people to bid on everything imaginable.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the auction world was dominated by two major players, Sotheby's and privately held Christie's. Two major events conspired to weaken their hegemony.

The first major impact on these two big players was the rising popularity of the Internet, and the second is the big settlement class action price-fixing suits that Sotheby's and Christies have had to endure that has cost them millions of dollars.

If the auction business consolidates further with any merger, then diversification will most likely take place within the auction houses themselves rather than through the emergence of entirely new entities. And, auction houses may well go the way of supermarkets, another marginal business--consolidating and gobbling up smaller competitors to create economies of scale.

Sotheby's is following a two-pronged strategy by launching a joint-venture art and collectibles auction site with Amazon.com, dubbed Sothebys.Amazon.com. as well as upgrading its own Sothebys.com Web site to offer online auctions concentrating on on artists and the art market, and other services.

Christie's, on the other hand, is not too sure of the Net's potential. But the site will be mainly an adjunct to Christie's traditional auction businesses.