The Antique Marks Blog

The desk where Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations and the final correspondence he produced hours before his death fetched £433,250 ($894,000) at a Christies auction on Wednesday, 4th June 2008.

The lot which went for about seven times its pre-sale estimate was bought by an Irish busnessman and the sale proceeds went to Great Ormond Street childrens hospital in London.

The Irish buyer thought the desk was a bargain and had expected to pay up to £5,000,000 for it.

The writing desk and chair from the study of Charles Dickens Gads Hill residence near Rochester in Kent, was inherited by Christopher Charles Dickens and his wife Jeanne-Marie Dickens. Who then donated them to Great Ormond Street hospital. An organisation that enjoyed a close association with Charles Dickens.

According to Christies, Dickens wrote Great Expectations and a number of other novels and short stories at the mahogany writing desk and the auctioneer quotes the memoirs of Dickens’s eldest daughter Mamie Dickens saying that, ‘on the evening of June 8, 1870, Dickens wrote letters and arranged some trifling business matters in the library where the desk stood.’

He then went for dinner and collapsed, suffering a stroke and dying the following day, aged just 58.

For the first time eBay have been held responsible for the items sold on its websites.

A FRENCH court has ruled that eBay are directly responsible for what is sold on their website and has ordered ebay to pay $30,000 to luxury goods designer Hermes for the their role in the sale of three counterfeit handbags.

The French judge found eBay directly accountable for the sale of counterfeit items by one of its customers. eBay maintains that it removes listings found to be fraudulent and argues that the liability for those listings is on the seller.

“By selling Hermes bags and branded accessories on the eBay.fr site, and by failing to act within their powers to prevent reprehensible use of the site,” the seller and eBay “committed acts of counterfeiting and imitation of French brand names … to the detriment of Hermes international,” the ruling said.

eBay has said that its Verified Rights Owner Program (VeRO) is in place to make it easy for intellectual property owners to report abuse. The company has stated that the “court ruling relates to past issues of seller verification.”

“The court acknowledged that eBay has closed these loopholes referencing the anti-counterfeiting measures spearheaded by the VeRO scheme which brings rights owners and eBay together to tackle the menace of counterfeit goods.”

eBay was ordered to pay the fine jointly with the seller who put the bags up for sale. eBay was also ordered to post the ruling on its French homepage for three months. Other designer brands have cases pending against eBay for sales of counterfeit goods including Louis Vuitton, Dior Couture, and L’Oreal.

The Court ruling supports the luxury goods firms and will challenge the framework on which eBay have built a multi-billion pound business. Legal decisions forcing eBay to vet goods prior to being uploaded could prove a serious threat to their operation, which process millions of items for sale each day.