Auctions

EBay Inc. said it would discontinue by year-end the section of its site that allows users to participate in live auctions hosted by other companies. The company said the move would not materially affect its business -- though millions of users patronize EBay's partner auction houses. A spokesman for San Jose-based EBay said maintaining and improving the 7-year-old Live Auctions platform fell outside the firm's current focus on boosting listings, improving buyers' experiences and making the site safer from fraud.

From the rides of kings to a king of rock 'n' roll, auction house Gooding & Co. has scored a couple of notable entries for its annual auction at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in August. The Santa Monica seller of high-end collector cars will put up for auction a 1938 Bugatti Type 57C Stelvio once owned by Prince Louis Napoleon, the grandson of the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I of France and noted World War II resistance fighter. Although the prince was forbidden to live in France for much of his life because of former laws banning the top heirs of French dynasties from living in the nation, he was fond of French vehicles, especially Bugattis.

If you buy something from online auctioneer Property Room, you don't have to wonder if it was stolen. That's because it probably was. Property Room, started by a former police detective, gets its items from law enforcement property rooms nationwide. Most of its inventory of jewelry, bicycles, computers, furniture, tools, car stereos, cameras, sports equipment, portable music players and things that could best be categorized under miscellaneous -- or bizarre -- was seized from crooks.

It's called Lot 160, a 5-inch glass tube that's unremarkable in every way - except that it purportedly held blood drawn from President Ronald Reagan as he lay struggling for life after an assassination attempt. The vial, partially coated with a ring of a residue, is being offered for sale by a British online auction house where bids Tuesday reached nearly $15,000. A label and an accompanying document identify it as having contained a blood sample taken from Reagan at George Washington University Hospital on March 30, 1981, the day he was shot outside aWashington, D.C., hotel.

Looking for some hot goods? PropertyRoom.com, a Web site launched this week in San Clemente, auctions goods that were seized or recovered by law enforcement agencies in Southern California. The parent company, Property Bureau, has agreements with a dozen Southern California police departments, including Fullerton and Garden Grove. By law, departments are required to sell the goods that accumulate in their warehouses. The money usually goes to the city or county. Enter Property Bureau.

The Medusa heads have all been removed from the fences, tiling and around the pool. And that vast 12-bedroom, 13-bath Mediterranean-style mansion on Ocean Drive has been sold--for $19 million. All that remains of the contents of the hedonistic pleasure palace Gianni Versace called Casa Casuarina, his Miami Beach home, has been shipped to Sotheby's New York, where it hits the auction block tonight through Saturday. The three-day auction is expected to fetch up to $7 million.

In a move that could foretell QVC Network's ultimate victory, Paramount Communications Inc. on Tuesday agreed to auction itself under rules reportedly recommended in large measure by QVC weeks ago in trying to halt a friendly Paramount merger with Viacom Inc. The board called for final bids to be submitted by Monday, but promised to let shareholders decide the company's fate in January by tendering their stock to the bidder of their choice.

A Bangladeshi immigrant paid a record $360,000 at a city auction for a New York taxi medallion, which is required by the city to own a taxicab. Most cabdrivers in the city work for taxi fleets or lease time from a medallion owner. Mohammed Shah, 44, mortgaged his house in the New York borough of Queens to help finance the purchase Monday of one of 116 new taxi medallions sold to the highest bidders. The price of an owner-driver medallion rose almost $50,000 from last year.

Pragmatic investors and romantic history buffs spent more than $500,000 here Friday on buffalo skulls, a full-length buffalo skin coat, a tomahawk, letters, guns and other memorabilia from the life of William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Carl Ontis, 39, who came to the auction dressed as Buffalo Bill in a fringed buckskin coat, high black boots and Stetson hat.

The Police Department will auction about 135 bicycles, 40 car stereos, tools, jewelry and other items today to clear its property room of unclaimed property. Bidding will start at 9 a.m. in the parking lot at City Hall, Alton Parkway and Harvard Avenue. About 350 items will be available for inspection starting at 8:30 a.m. Checks will be accepted from buyers with California driver's licenses or identification cards.

The financial well-being of nonprofit arts organizations typically depends on ticket-buying fans and check-writing philanthropists, but the Music Center is trying to bring complete strangers into the mix — including some who might never set foot on Bunker Hill, or for that matter, the West Coast. Its first-ever online auction is going on right now, with 36 items up for bid. They range from what you might expect — living it up at the Los Angeles Opera’s opening night gala on Sept.

For sale: An exotic, once top-secret radar-evading ship, dubbed the Sea Shadow, that was built by one of the world's largest defense contractors during the height of the Cold War. Specifications: about 68 feet wide, 164 feet long and around 563 tons. Price: $139,200 or best offer. If interested, please contact the General Services Administration at its website: gsaauctions.gov. That's the sales pitch from theU.S. Navy, which - after five years of trying and failing to donate the stealthy Sea Shadow to a museum - is now selling the ship for scrap metal in an online auction.

In 1908, baseball great Honus Wagner was planning to retire from the Pittsburg Pirates, but the Pirates owner was so anxious to keep his star that he doubled Wagner's salary -- to $10,000. Wouldn't Wagner be shocked to hear that a 1909 baseball card bearing his image sold at auction Friday for $1.2 million? That price might be considered a relative bargain. Last year, Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick paid $2.8 million for a Wagner card considered in the best condition of the approximately 60 known to survive.

WASHINGTON - Verizon Wireless plans to sell billions of dollars' worth of prime airwaves if regulators approve its planned purchases of new chunks of spectrum primarily from large cable companies. Verizon, which paid about $4.4 billion in 2008 in a government auction of coveted airwaves in the 700-megahertz band, said it no longer would need that spectrum to deploy its fourth-generation LTE network if the cable deals are approved. Among the spectrum Verizon plans to sell are swaths covering Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.

The gig: David Gooding, 45, is president and founder of Gooding & Co. in Santa Monica, which sells classic cars - from antiques such as a 1912 Model T Speedster to hot sports cars such as a 1973 Porsche 917/30 Can-Am Spyder - typically at auctions. Hot market: "We have seen extraordinary prices and growth in our market," he said. "It is not just a few buyers driving the price up but rather many buyers from all over the globe. " Gooding's company sold 297 collector cars last year, averaging $441,218 each.

The town of Buford , Wyo. -- one resident (who's leaving), one ZIP Code (82052) and five buildings (a home, a store and three old buildings) -- sold at auction Thursday for $900,000. Real estate auction company Williams & Williams of Tulsa, Okla., sold the 10-acre town to a buyer from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, who flew to Wyoming for the auction, a statement from the company says. The buyer was not identified. Bidding started at 100,000 in an auction that took place in Buford and online.

Mae West was the genuine article--even if not all her diamonds were real. Such were my thoughts as Joe Gold and I, both longtime friends of Mae's, went over the jewelry and memorabilia that her longtime companion Charles Krauser had stored after her death in 1980 at 87. Krauser, who died last year at 76, and Gold, founder of Gold's and World gyms, were in Mae's fabled muscle man chorus line in her '50s nightclub act. "Goodness, what diamonds!

More than 170 people crowded the ballroom of a Long Beach hotel for what amounted to an upscale fire sale. The event was an auction. The products were 38 posh waterfront condominiums. And bidders like Mike Murphy came looking for bargains. The Internet marketing worker snapped up a two-bedroom unit for $376,000, less than half the original price. In all, he and other eager buyers ponied up $14.9 million in less than 90 minutes.

Facebook came out valued at $102.8 billion after its final stock auction on the secondary market. That's more than $7 billion beyond what the company was valued at the start of Friday, with its stock price climbing from $41 to $44.10 a share. The trading on SharesPost, a secondary market, is the last time Facebook's stock will change hands before the company's IPO in early May. The $3.10-per-share increase means the 120 million Facebook shares Mark Zuckerberg purchased this morning at 6 cents a share have already increased their value and are now worth nearly $5.3 billion.