The feel-good mood led to two other auction records.
During the closing years of the 18th century, two other auction houses were founded in London whose businesses persisted into the 21st century, Bonham's (1793) and Phillips (1796, now Phillips de Pury & Company).
In the past eBay has succeeded in getting two other auction sites, BiddersEdge.com and Ruby Lane, to stop crawling its site simply by asking, but AuctionWatch has yet to adhere to eBay's request.
A handwritten set of Robinson's lyrics for his song "Who's Loving You" and two other auction items contributed $32,000 to the evening's take for the museum.
But in 2012 he ran into further problems after failing to pay a string of auction houses; his total unpaid bill to worldwide auctioneers and art dealers included £4.3m owed to Bonhams, around £30m to Sotheby's, and various other sums owed to at least five other auction houses and art dealers.
In 1991 Radcliffe created Art Loss Register when Sotheby's, Christie's and four other auction houses, along with venture capitalists, put up a total of $1.6 million.
Ebay's art world partners (Butterfield and eight other auction houses around the world) will be hard put to match the heft of a Sotheby's or Christie's, but Ebay does have one big advantage: traffic.
Four or five other solar auctions could occur in the coming months, Mr. Dove said.
In November's New York auctions, two other monumental sculptures by Mr. Koons brought far steeper prices, with "Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold)" going for $23.5 million at Sotheby's and "Diamond (Blue)" for $11.8 million at Christie's.
Al-Russiyah also took two other girls at the same auction, where her 10-year-old sister was sold to a "high-profile" fighter.
