Auctions

Will rock and roll chef Anthony Bourdain come work in the commissary as part of a deal? That might be what some of the major media conglomerates kicking the tires of Cox Communications Inc.'s Travel Channel are wondering. The auction for the channel, whose biggest show is Bourdain's "No Reservations," is underway and the usual suspects are taking a look. Among those interested in the network are NBC Universal, Scripps Network and even News Corp., according to news reports. The price tag being bandied about is in the neighborhood of $700 million.

Last year was the year Bill Gross said his stamps had outperformed his bond fund, Stanley Ho beat Damien Hirst in bidding for a truffle and Amazon.com Inc. paid 39 times estimates for a book of J.K. Rowling stories. Among the mishaps in 2007, Marie Antoinette's pearls and a Van Gogh painting didn't sell. Money poured into the sales rooms in New York, London and Hong Kong, swelling auction sales by 46% at Sotheby's, to $5.33 billion; Christie's International totals aren't in yet.

AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and Google Inc. won clearance Monday to bid for airwaves in a U.S. government auction next week, a sale that aims to spur advances in mobile phones and may raise as much as $15 billion. Vulcan Spectrum Management Inc., the company backed by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, and MetroPCS Communications Inc. also are among the 214 qualified bidders, the Federal Communications Commission said. The auction pits AT&T and Verizon, the two biggest U.S.

In times of war, they have proved safer than radios, more nimble than humans, more fuel-efficient than aircraft. Depending on the price of birdseed. Their exploits, though, have tended to go underappreciated here in London, where Mayor Ken Livingstone's long-running war with the lowly pigeon over who controls the territory of Trafalgar Square has tended to obscure the otherwise heroic stature of the ubiquitous waddlers. No more.

A Florida company won the rights to Axium International Inc.'s staffing subsidiary at a federal bankruptcy auction Wednesday, two weeks after the Hollywood payroll service provider abruptly folded. MPS Group Inc., a provider of staffing and consulting services, won the auction after its bid of $8.075 million was approved by a bankruptcy judge during a three-hour proceeding in downtown Los Angeles. The publicly traded Jacksonville, Fla.

Top bidders put up a total of almost $2.78 billion Thursday in the opening rounds of the Federal Communications Commission's auction of U.S. government-owned airwaves. The figure represents the highest bids received for five blocks of spectrum at the beginning of the auction, which is eventually expected to net the federal government at least $10 billion. Companies qualified to bid include major carriers AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, as well as possible new competitors such as Google Inc.

NEW rugs fashioned by famous designers or sold in limited editions often are touted as investments, like fine art. But just as in that fickle field, it's hard to predict which rugs will appreciate in value. Contemporary rugs are a small part of the 20th century furnishings market, Peter Loughrey of Los Angeles Modern Auctions said.

Popular health and beauty products sold on Internet auction sites could be stolen, tainted and possibly dangerous, according to a warning issued today by the National Retail Federation. Advil, Visine, baby formula, diabetic testing strips and other goods are being stolen from stores, warehouses and cargo trailers and peddled on EBay and other online auction sites, said Joseph LaRocca, the group's vice president of loss prevention.

The petition was signed by 195 children in Concord, Mass. Their single request was painfully simple: that the president free "all the little slave children in this country." On April 5, 1864, Abraham Lincoln replied to the woman who had organized the petition, ending his letter, "While I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it."

The highest bidder in the multibillion-dollar sale of prime airwaves disclosed its plans for the wireless spectrum Friday, and the most prominent loser explained why it was still a big winner. A day after rules prohibiting participants in the federal government's online auction from discussing their strategies lifted, Verizon Wireless said it would use the new capacity to roll out faster wireless Internet service by 2010. Verizon outbid Google Inc., paying $4.