Each Sunday on the plaza of the Museum of Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil, there’s a bustling antiques fair with high-quality merchandise from throughout the country. It was there that I recently had a surprising and somewhat disappointing revelation about one of the ways Internet services have changed the global marketplace: There are no bargains any more.

The revelation was surprising because I already knew it — but seeing it in person, in such a distant setting, caused me to think about globalization and eBay in a new light.

It was disappointing because, hey, everyone wants a bargain.

That Sunday the weather was perfect and I had already planned my Monday presentation before the Brazilian newspaper association discussing classified ads. How better to spend a free day than wandering among the locals, looking at the jewelry, furniture, books, musical instruments, silver, gold and other antiques for sale?

Pens for sale

We passed a booth with a beautiful, extensive assortment of fountain pens for sale when my son, Adam, 15, decided to take a look. So we stopped, and the gentleman who owned the pens started showing us his stock.

“This one’s a Parker from 1972,” he explained, “and this one’s a Waterman ...” Then he started talking prices.

“You can have this one for $250 U.S.,” he told Adam, who certainly wasn’t looking for pens in that price range, “and look, it sells for more than $300 on eBay.”

He pulled out a Web screen shot showing an eBay sale for that particular model pen. For me, the nature of the antiques market suddenly changed. No longer was it a local fair on the streets of Sao Paulo, where Paulistas could haggle over a painting, table or kitchen set. Now it was just another cog in the global antiques marketplace, facilitated by eBay and the Web.

Finding data

A savvy antiques dealer almost anywhere in the world can now check the value of his or her products by seeing what they’d bring in on eBay. Small portable goods — fountain pens, silver sets, knives and daggers, coins and stamps — are easier to ship anywhere than, say, large armoires. But even that large armoire is now a candidate for sale to someone who saw it on eBay. At the very least, the dealer has a much better sense of retail values than he might have had just a few years ago.

The flip side of that, of course, is that there should be no more uneducated buyers and no more rip-offs.

Just as the fountain-pen dealer can review the value of his merchandise in the global market before setting a price, ostensibly, Adam could have reviewed how much he should pay for a specific pen before he began shopping. That assumes, of course, that he was looking for a fountain pen in the first place. Or he could have had wireless access to eBay and fountain-pen Web sites to compare prices on the spot.

So far, our family isn’t that well connected technologically. But others are.

‘Marketplace’ key

What are the implications for your newspaper?

The “marketplace” is the key. It must be comprehensive, easily usable, personal, highly local or niche-oriented, and transparent for buyers and sellers.

If you’re selling houses in the eastern suburbs of Tulsa, Okla., for example, comparative prices from the eastern suburbs of San Francisco don’t provide much value for home buyers and sellers (except shock value, perhaps). But having data on every house for sale, and recently sold, in Tulsa’s eastern suburbs is essential — along with information on houses in the western suburbs, the city center and nearby communities. Add in content about schools, relative crime rates, neighborhood facilities like dry cleaners, doctors and dentists, and you’ve got an unbeatable marketplace.

Comparative info

Cars are the same. No one’s likely to bring a used car from Brazil to the United States unless it’s a very exotic car. But being able to compare prices on 20 or 30 or 50 similar cars, in similar condition, in a local or expanded regional marketplace, creates unmatched benefits for both buyers and sellers.

That’s why excellent searchability — whether for a car, a home, a job or even a fountain pen — with targeting capabilities based on location, type, price and other details, is an essential ingredient of today’s marketplace. And that’s why local-regional networks, such as those created by PowerOne Media, and national employment networks like those offered by CareerCast, are such valuable tools for advertisers and Web users.

In a transparent, global marketplace, there may be no bargains, but there should be no rip-offs either — and the robust sale of goods and homes, and matching of job-seekers with employers, remains an effective and valued function of the company providing that marketplace.

Peter M. Zollman is founding principal of Classified Intelligence LLC and the Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC, a consulting group that works with newspapers and other media companies to develop profitable interactive services. He can be reached at 407.788.2780 or via e-mail at pzollman@aimgroup.com.