Topic summary
Auction house
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Auction.
Modern revival
The London Gazette began reporting on the auctioning of artwork in the coffeehouses and taverns of London in the late 17th century. The first known auction house in the world was the Stockholm Auction House, Sweden (Stockholms Auktionsverk), founded by Baron Claes Rålamb in 1674. Sotheby's, currently the world's second-largest auction house, was founded in London on 11 March 1744, when Samuel Baker presided over the disposal of "several hundred scarce and valuable" books from the library of an acquaintance. Christie's, now the world's largest auction house, was founded by James Christie in 1766 in London and published its first auction catalog that year, although newspaper advertisements of Christie's sales dating from 1759 have been found.