With apologies to Star Trek, the new age of auctioneering is looking like a Brave New World.

On Dec. 31 eBay will pull the plug on their live auctions. The ramifications are tremendous.

For more than five years now, many of the largest auction houses in the country have ridden the massive coattails of eBay. In the early 2000s eBay was the King. Constantly touting their 147 million registered bidders (a number that’s constantly in flux), the talk quickly turned to “eyeballs” and “bang for your buck.” EBay appeared to offer the most of both.

“One thing eBay brought to the table was a brand name, and that was significant,” says Amelia Jeffers, owner of powerhouse Garths Auctions in Delaware, Ohio. “When we go out and talk to a customer, they always ask, ’will the auction be on eBay?’ That’s the only name they know, if I say, ’no, it’s not going to be on eBay,’ and name some other company, it just makes the sale that much more difficult.”

But, now the King is dead: eBay has left the (live auction) building.

Live Internet platforms can be had – some say for a few thousand dollars – but that may only create a small island in the expansive sea. These auctioneers still understand that it’s the “eyeballs” that will make them “captains of the sea.”

The stakes are high; and it is not a time for a pitfall.

Alabama-based Grand View Antiques and Auctions was one of the first brick and mortar auction houses to jump on the live eBay bandwagon. As a purveyor of high-end antiques, auctioneer Jim Sloan saw the future.

“Although we are a brick and mortar business, my plan five years ago was to create a virtual reality auction facility,” Sloan says. “We saw live auctions as our bread and butter.”

His assessment was on target; eBay has brought the world to Sloan’s auction house in tiny Roanoke, Ala., population 6,500. This year, 80 percent of the high-dollar goods rolling through Grand View were sold on the Internet or telephone, Sloan says.

“eBay brought such a broad universe to our auctions,” Sloan says. “The numbers were big. And there was a percentage of these people who would stumble into our market and buy, and that was good.”

In 2009, Sloan’s plan is no different. Although he still sees live auctions as the bread and butter, his methods of attracting eyeballs will change without eBay.

“We’re going to have to target our markets better,” he says. “We’re going to be working with a smaller spectrum. We’re going to be losing that ’chance’ customer, there was always that percentage of buyers with eBay. We’re going to have to put more emphasis on advertising, print and other avenues … we’re going to have to look at data bases … we’re going to have to look at newer options.”

Despite all its acclaimed faults, eBay played an indispensible role in tying the antique and collectible world together. In great part, eBay created that market which has greatly benefited the

specialized auction houses.

During the past five years, Mohawk Auctions has firmly established itself as one of the premier international markets of militaria. During its more than 45 years of business, it has sold a wide array of militaria – weapons, badges, uniforms and more – to museums, private collectors and historians. But, it has been the Internet which has better enabled it to “reach out and touch” the nouveau riche markets of oil-rich Russia, Eastern Europe, China and the Mid East. And it has done so with eBay Live.

Mohawk Auctions owner Ray Zyla has had “his moments” with this new technology. eBay’s decision not to allow firearms and Nazi memorabilia on their site, in addition to many other “capricious” edicts by the Internet company have rankled Zyla to no end. However, at the time, they were the “only wheel in town.” And, he says, that’s not due to a lack of trying to find another conduit to his worldwide market.

“I’ve been trying to find a program for our auction site for two or three years now,” he says, “and I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere. I’ve worked with local people – I’ve worked with people from out of town – and they say they’re competent. But every time we get through with Stage One and we discuss our needs, it never advances beyond that, into Stage Two.

Mohawk delivers two large scale auctions, around 1,200 cataloged lots, twice per year. The next auction, according to Zyla will be in late May, early June, he says. Already time is getting short.

And the decision Zyla – and several other auctioneers left within the wake of eBay – will be critical to the future of their business.

“It’s the ultimate decision right now,” says John W. Coker, owner of a Tennessee auction company, who is also shopping for an online provider. “You will have to offer that kind of service, that kind of exposure (as eBay) to survive. If you don’t do that for your consignors, you simply won’t have any.”

Eric C. Rodenberg