Autographed document on Ebay

By VelvetWood on Wed, 07/08/2020 - 12:47

Forums

I'm thinking through citing an item for sale on ebay. It's a check with a signature on it that shows the person's signature on a specific date, before they changed it to another spelling. Do eBay listings get cached by the Wayback Machine? To be safe do I cite the whole listing URL in the footnote? Once it's sold the "repository" will be unknown. Is that a problem? Is  it better for me to buy it and state ebay as the provenance and me as the repository? Too may questions? 

Submitted byEEon Wed, 07/08/2020 - 21:17

VelvetWood, as you've noted, items posted for sale on eBay are here today and gone tomorrow. There would be no way for anyone in the future to authenticate anything you say you got from the item's image unless you purchased the item and added it to your research collection. In that case, you'd not only cite eBay as your provenance but also the eBay seller (name or pseudonym and location) and any information the seller provides. If it were my opportunity, I'd also question the seller about the provenance.