Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Auction Results: Contemporary Art Including Arab & Iranian Art, October 16, 2009 @Sotheby's London

The photography lots found within the larger Contemporary Art sale at Sotheby's in London last week performed generally in line with the "Normal" definition we have come to see this season for photography, albeit somewhat under the performance benchmarks we have been consistently using: the Buy-In rate was near 25% (in this case just over 28%) and the Total Sale Proceeds just missed the Total Low Estimate (rather than covering it). This was however a major improvement over the performance of the Phillips photography sale in London the day before.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 39
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £765000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1080000
Total Lots Sold: 28
Total Lots Bought In: 11
Buy In %: 28.21%
Total Sale Proceeds: £739375

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 2
Low Sold: 2
Low Bought In: 0
Buy In %: 00.00%
Total Low Estimate: £8000
Total Low Sold: £12875

Mid Total Lots: 24
Mid Sold: 16
Mid Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 33.33%
Total Mid Estimate: £342000
Total Mid Sold: £212250

High Total Lots: 13
High Sold: 10
High Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 23.08%
Total High Estimate: £730000
Total High Sold: £514250

An amazing 100.00% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate, which says the lots were mostly well edited and conservatively priced. There was only one surprise in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 301 Yazan Khalili, Colour Correction, 2007, at £9750

The top lots by High estimate were lot 114, Gilbert & George, Ginkgoed, 2005, and lot 126, Rashid Rana, Red Carpet-3, 2007, both at £80000-120000. The Gilbert & George was the top outcome of the sale at £97250; the Rana did not sell.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Sotheby's
34-35 New Bond Street
London W1A 2AA

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