Angus Murray, Castlestone Management’s head, issued this press release today with some interesting numbers on the number of bidders in the New York Evening sales. We’ve asked Castlestone for a little more detail on this chart but you can see that it shows the average number of bidders (bars) vs. the average number of lots (line) in the New York Evening Sales from 2004 to 2009. In the Fall of 2009, the number of bidders exceeds even the boom years.

Castlestone also makes mention of a rise in year-over-year bidders during the London sales earlier this year:

The sudden rise in the number of bidders at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auctions is estimated to be up by 85% in February 2010 to last year and 18% from the height of the Contemporary Art boom in 2007, mostly attributed to demand thus pushing prices above estimated values.

Of course, Castlestone also makes some positive statements about their fund:

Constanze Kubern, Senior Art Advisor at Castlestone Management says, “Modern/Post-War Art has shown to be a safer category pushing its share of global fine art turnover from 44% in 2008 to 48% in 2009, while Contemporary Art has dropped from 16% to 10% for this year. Hence, we remain confident that the Collection of Modern Art Fund’s strategy of investing in Modern/Post-War Art is the way to move forward”

Castlestone Management is looking forward to highlighting positive returns for the 1st Quarter 2010, as the Collection of Modern Art Fund continues to benefit from the art market’s upturn in line with the AMR Post-War Art 50 Index up by 1.88% in February.

Castlestone’s Collection of Modern Art Fund Press release