Under the terms of the acquisition, WorthPoint founder and CEO Will Seippel will remain chief executive officer, and GoAntiques President and CEO Jim Kamnikar will serve as WorthPoint’s president. The combined company will have more than a half-million registered members and more than a million unique visitors per month.

Founded in 2007, WorthPoint offers a database of sales records on art, antiques and collectibles from hundreds of auction houses. Its rich multimedia experience helps collectors understand the value of their items. Members can take advantage of expert advice from the Company’s Worthologist team on how to preserve or sell antiques and collectibles. Members can also share their knowledge and create online collecting communities.

GoAntiques is the oldest Web antiques-and-collectibles site. It offers 650,000 items from approximately 1,300 dealers in 31 countries. GoAntiques logs about five million page views and thousands of transactions each month and has approximately 450,000 registered members. GoAntiques’ PriceMiner(R) guide is the biggest in the world, offering prices on 27 million collectibles and pieces of art and over 32 million images.

“The art, antiques and collectibles industry is undergoing some dramatic changes as the population ages and we face uncertain economic times,” said Will Seippel. “Combining GoAntiques’ wealth of experience in the art, antiques and collectibles market with our unmatched database of 4.5 millionauction entries helps put WorthPoint in a leading position to reinvigorateour industry.”

Seippel added, “In the future, we will look to both organic growth through sales and marketing initiatives and possible strategic acquisitions to build our subscriber base.”

“WorthPoint is taking important steps to ensure a seamless transition in the acquisition of GoAntiques,” said Jim Kamnikar. “In the coming months, we will be unveiling new features and services to help people understand the antiques and collectibles they own, determine their value and how to monetize them. Members can look forward to a diverse community supporting different areas of collecting, a new Internet-auction environment and a taxonomy that will make finding, pricing, researching and selling antiques much easier.”

About WorthPoint
Atlanta-based WorthPoint Corp. is an Internet-based data-and-media company that offers a vast database of sales records on art, antiques and collectibles. Founded in 2007, WorthPoint has quickly become the world’s largest social network for researching the worth of antiques and collectibles. WorthPoint helps collectors understand the worth of their items and provides expert advice from its Worthologist team on how to preserve or sell antiques and collectibles.

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The artillery shell that exploded Monday and killed a Civil War relics dealer outside his Chesterfield County home was a cannonball about 8 to 10 inches in diameter, a federal official said yesterday.

The explosion outside the rear garage of Sam White’s residence off Bradley Bridge Road left a small crater in his asphalt driveway and sent pieces of shrapnel shooting through the side and roof of his detached, two-car garage.

“And there were pieces that just flew out and landed in the yard,” said Bill Dunham, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives office in Chesterfield.

“Basically, it was a large cannonball,” Dunham said of the bowling-ball-sized shell, which sent what he described as a 5to 7-pound chunk of shrapnel through the roof of another house about a quarter-mile away.

Dunham said investigators believe they know how the explosion occurred, but that information is being withheld until the investigation into White’s death has been finalized. Dunham would only say that White was “working on” the shell when it exploded about 1:20 p.m.

“We have enough information that we believe we know generally what he was doing and how it happened,” Dunham said. “But we can’t say with 100 percent accuracy that that’s exactly what he was doing.”

White, who was well-known in the Civil War community and ran a relics business from his home in the 14100 block of Granite Pointe Court, cleaned and disarmed Civil War period military ordnance for about $35 each, according to his Web site.

After Monday’s accident, local, state and federal authorities converged on his house to inspect the remaining munitions he had stored in his garage. Concerned about the potential volatility of some of the ordnance, authorities removed about 75 items, about half of which were destroyed at county-owned property next to a nearby landfill, state police said yesterday.

Late Tuesday, after police had removed many of the munitions, authorities called on Army and Marine explosive-ordnance-disposal experts from Fort Belvoir and Quantico Marine Corps Base to examine other items that were considered questionable.

“They were a great help in identifying what goes and what doesn’t, what’s dangerous and what’s questionable,” Dunham said.

The ordnance units took some of remaining shells with them, Dunham said. “I think some of these items will be able to be returned to the family after they’re rendered safe.”

Although local and federal authorities are researching the issue, several officials contacted yesterday said it didn’t appear that White, who worked briefly as a Henrico County police officer in the mid-1970s, broke any federal, state or local laws in keeping the munitions on his property.

“We researched a lot of federal, state and local statutes, trying to figure out what governs items like this, what’s the proper way to store these things, if there is any recourse we have, and can we dictate where people put them,” Dunham said. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions there.”

A state law that makes it a felony to manufacture, possess or use explosive materials includes an exemption for firefighters, police officers and members of the military, along with people who possess, transport or distribute explosive devices for scientific and educational reasons, “or any other lawful purpose.”

Chesterfield Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Ken Nickels said it is unlikely that his office would prosecute someone for possessing explosive material that was a Civil War relic — depending, of course, on the circumstances and the intent of the person possessing the item.

Dunham said there doesn’t appear to be any federal explosives law that would cover Civil War ordnance, “except maybe a storage mandate.”

“If you have 50 pounds or more of black powder, you have to have it in an approved storage location,” he said. “But some of [White's] shells had only 10 ounces [of powder], so it would take a lot to aggregate 50 pounds’ worth.”

Dunham said Monday’s explosion, while tragic, has been a learning experience for law enforcement.

“We’ve learned a lot in this because in the past, we haven’t had an incident with these type of devices and this number of them,” he said. “I didn’t realize there’s such an interest in relics like this. There’s a lot of people out there looking to uncover and collect that kind of stuff.”
Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or mbowes [at] timesdispatch [dot] com.

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