Pick up any glossy art magazine and you will meet a barrage of dot.com advertisements trying to convince you that masterpieces are exchanging hands in cyberspace every day of the week. This is simply not true. Whilst traditional brick and mortar art galleries and auction houses are establishing a strong presence on the internet  which gives them undreamt of exposure - online art auctions are like the Emperor's New Clothes - if there are marvellous deals being wrought, they are invisible. 
Visit any site right now and try to find a painting in the last hours of auction time that has reached its reserve. Where are all the bidders? 
The leading art specialist website that holds auctions has published figures for last year with online sales totalling US$498,000 from just 115 lots sold. Whilst you might think well done!, the cash investment of US$25.2 million plus a running staff of 78 far outweighs the meager results. 
You mean to say that with all that money, all those people and an enormous advertising campagin only 115 lots were sold in one year? This represents a negligible share of the world's estimated US$5 billion auction market.
Rumours are circulating that a few of the high profile sales which have received media attention were completely staged, with the dot.com company buying the work of art themselves by using a 'fence'. The idea of their advertising agents. (We can't mention names, they are a notoriously litigious bunch).

After a ten minute online search at the largest auction site we found one decent nineteenth century painting for sale which was being sold at a price far below its normal auction value. Why? Because the seller had already sold it online only to find the buyer would not pay. He had no choice he said, but to put it up for sale again at a low estimate. Hence another problem of person to person online auctions - there is no guarantee the buyer will pay up.  Its all down to sheer luck and blind trust. Many sellers are seduced by the lower commission fees online compared to offline auction houses. However if the hammer goes down at Sothebys or Christies, you get your money. Whilst many sellers are enticed to place their goods online to cut costs, their numbers are not being matched by collectors bidding online. People still want to see a work of art before buying it, this is just plain common sense. If galleries are having some success through online presence it is only because the collector is alerted to the presence of a work of art in an offline gallery and will go to see it there in situ. Gallery owners will tell you they have yet to make serious transactions from collectors just seeing a digital image on their computer screens. 
Whilst this may be possible with art that comes straight from the studio of a known living artist people are just too sceptical of authenticity (and rightly so) to collect online. 

"The internet is more about putting people in touch with one another. A collector can browse the galleries who have an online presence and see only a fraction of what they have in stock, because it costs us so much to have images put up on a website. But we do get enquiries from people serious about collecting and they come to see the paintings in our gallery, so we consider having a webpage very worthwhile." commented Bernard Achurch of London.

We might be a bit harsh, admittedly its early days yet. I come from a long line of collectors and what applied in my great grandfather's day applies now - one cannot, one should not buy a work of art without seeing it first. It is not solely a question of authenticity, there are sites 'guaranteeing' the genuine nature of the work for sale but more importantly it is the experience of art being viewed firsthand that cannot be supplanted by the internet. The only possible exception is if you are already familiar with the work of an artist and can ring him/her up afterwards to confirm - or in the case where an artist is lucky enough to have his/her own website selling to the collector directly. I am sure even my great-grandfather would have bought a Monet unseen if he'd received a letter from Giverny. Buying non-contemporary art online is a foolish venture and will attract foolish buyers only. Advertising art online is sensible and a marvellous way of bringing collector and gallery or auction house together.

Till technology devises a way of examining a work of art on a computer screen with the same reliability provided by looking at the actual work with the naked eye  - till technology can also replicate the sense of touch ... the massive investment being poured into online fine art auctions is just an excuse to burn other people's money.

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