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Not All Sumo Are Heavyweights

February 5, 2011 by Marion Maneker

Bonham’s Matthew Haley posted this comment after reading the Wall Street Journal’s story on Benedikt Taschen and the extraordinary prices Helmut Newton’s “Sumo” has achieved:

The Wall Street Journal’s numbers for Sumo are indeed interesting. They are also misleading, as so often happens when newspapers report on the art market. I have frequently seen decent copies of Sumo fail to sell in auction at low estimates of $1,500 (its original retail price), and I have seen copies sell for $6,000 or more.

It tends to make the least money when sold in book auctions (where bookish buyers know that a “limited edition” of 10,000 copies published a decade ago is unlikely to be worth many times what it originally sold for) and the most money in design, interiors or other non-book auctions – where I fear uneducated buyers are getting carried away on the kind of hype in the Wall Street Journal piece.

It’s an important book, no doubt, and a fine piece of printing. But it is not worth the$15,000 that someone apparently paid on eBay for a copy, and collectors should be cautious about buying a Taschen limited edition and in the hope of making 1000% in a decade.

A market based on lack of knowledge can only last so long (tulips, the South Sea Company, et al.). “Benedikt Taschen’s Risky Business” indeed.

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