NEW YORK, Aug. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sotheby's (NYSE:BID) is pleased to announce that the first phase of its new mobile bidding platform has been released for the single owner Original Film Posters Online sale, which is open for bidding now until 5 September. The online-only auction, which features the world's first film poster, is accessible on a mobile device through the Sotheby's app for both iOS and Android operating systems, as well from a web browser.
Sotheby's will now conduct all of its online-only single owner and partner sales using the new mobile bidding platform, which includes the ability to bid easily within the mobile app, newer simpler registration, and payments up to $50,000 within the app for select auctions. The platform, launched in a test version for a number of small sales since April, has been extremely successful and is now being scaled up across the business.
Later this year, Sotheby's plans to migrate all online-only auctions to its new mobile bidding platform. In addition, Sotheby's will do a pilot live auction on the new mobile bidding platform by the end of this year, with the further plan to migrate all of its auctions to the new platform in 2019.
"We continue to drive innovations to provide clients with exciting opportunities and a seamless experience, and doing business with Sotheby's just got easier," said Tad Smith, Sotheby's CEO.
Highlighting the Original Film Posters Online sale is Cinématographe Lumière, the inaugural poster designed in 1896 for the first-ever film to be screened in public. The sale also features a strong James Bond section, which includes the original artwork for the iconic French You Only Live Twice poster, as well as sci-fi giants including Star Wars, Forbidden Planet and King Kong.
In the first half of 2018, Sotheby's sales to online bidders totaled more than $100 million, a 30% increase compared to the first half of 2017, and with 25% of all lots sold purchased online.
Among the highlights of Sotheby's nearly 40 Online-Only sales presented in the first half of 2018 were Bruce Springsteen's handwritten working manuscript for 'Born To Run', which sold in a sale of Fine Books & Manuscripts for $250,000, and John Chamberlain's String of Perils from 1991, a domestically scaled example of the artist's dynamic crushed metal sculptures, which sold for $170,000 in a sale of Contemporary Art Online.
Upcoming Online-Only auctions include Sotheby's second edition of Old Master Copies open for bidding on 5 September, featuring a vast range of paintings by accomplished followers and students of some of the greatest old master painters, and some of art history's most famous images, as well as the most recent Diamonds Online Capsule Collection, a highly curated sale of eight lots of exceptional loose diamonds sourced by Diacore, the esteemed diamond manufacturer, which opens for bidding on 8 September 2018 in celebration of the Chinese tradition of numerology.
About Sotheby's
Sotheby's has been uniting collectors with world-class works of art since 1744. Sotheby's became the first international auction house when it expanded from London to New York (1955), the first to conduct sales in Hong Kong (1973), India (1992) and France (2001), and the first international fine art auction house in China (2012). Today, Sotheby's presents auctions in 11 different salesrooms, including New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris, and Sotheby's BidNow program allows visitors to view all auctions live online and place bids from anywhere in the world. Sotheby's offers collectors the resources of Sotheby's Financial Services, the world's only full-service art financing company, as well as the collection, artist, estate & foundation advisory services of its subsidiary, Art Agency, Partners. Sotheby's presents private sale opportunities in more than 70 categories, including S|2, the gallery arm of Sotheby's Global Fine Art Division, and three retail businesses: Sotheby's Wine, Sotheby's Diamonds, and Viyet, the online marketplace for interior design. Sotheby's has a global network of 80 offices in 40 countries and is the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (BID).
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