Search tips

The IA lot database stores all lot information in a full text catalogue.

It incorporates a multilingual thesaurus to ease the task of finding keywords even in catalogue entries other then the language you are querying in. For example when searching for a "chair" you will receive results for lots with only German description containing "sessel" or "stuhl" or a French entry containing "chaise".

Please be aware that not all catalogue information may be available in the language you selected.

The multilingual thesaurus will improve over the time as we continue to teach it new words based on your queries.

As one word may have different meanings in the various languages it is important to always select the language of the keywords you are querying.

To narrow or broaden the search, the lot database uses special characters as do most search engines on the internet:

Words separated by a space are treated as optional.
e.g. 'Picasso painting' will find all lots which either have the word Picasso or the word painting or both words in the description.

Words preceded by a + are treated as mandatory.
e.g. '+Picasso +painting' will find only those lots where the description contains both words.

Words preceded by a - are treated as excluding search words.
e.g. '+Picasso -painting' will find all lots where the description contains the word Picasso and excludes all lots containing the word painting.

Specifying search phrases
Putting quotation marks around 2 or more words defines an exact search phrase.e.g. ' "Pablo Picasso" ' will find all lots where the exact phrase is contained in the description. But it will not find lots having 'Picasso, Pablo' or any other combination of those words in the decription.

An * at the end of a word is treated as a wildcard.
By default, we are looking for words matching the exact search term you entered. If you want to match words that start with a specific character sequence, add an * to the end of it. This means that entering 'pic*' would find lots containing 'picasso' or 'picture' alike.