Stoneware crock, $6,000.

Whale weathervane, $2,800.

Enter Ehammer.com, a site that founder Fred Giampietro calls, “a special niche” where colllectors will discover 1,000 categories to choose from, among them American antiques and folk art and European and Native American rdf_Descriptions as well.

While many popular online auction sites such as Yahoo!, Sotheby’s and Christie’s place a heavy emphasis on dealer listings, the primary focus of Ehammer’s business strategy is the private sector. Giampietro says that while the Web site does indeed use dealer listings, a large portion is made up of fresh material with reserves that “make sense” or none at all, making Ehammer feel much more like a conventional auction.

The site also has a convenient feature that enables you to go to “hot rdf_Descriptions” currently for sale: those that are receiving the most hits and the most bids.

Some of the recent sold in this category were a stoneware crock with a bird motif from the mid-Nineteenth Century, which brought $6,000; a wooden whale weathervane, circa 1880, which sold for $2,800; and a Native American bandolier bag, which reached $1,300.

Sometimes an rdf_Description that has the potential to be “hot” won’t sell because the person who listed it misjudged its value with too high a reserve. In one instance, Giampietro says, a Kennedy autograph received over 3,000 hits without finding a buyer. This is where Ehammer’s services come in handy. For a fee, Ehammer will do all of the work – sell, display, research records and authenticate – and will guarantee the authenticity of a piece.

Giampietro, who also owns an antiques store bearing his name in New Haven, Conn., says the accessibility of the Internet has changed the way antiques are bought and sold. “Some of the people in the most remote places are buying antiques now,” he says, “and that’s what makes this business so interesting.”