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Tyranny of the 1.5% at May Auctions in New York

April 30, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Colin Gleadell runs some numbers on the May Contemporary sales in New York. The total estimates for all three houses are between $807m and $1.1bn spread across nearly 1300 works. If the high end of the estimate range is achieved average prices would approach $1m. But those numbers are deceptive:

  • 16 works estimated at $10 million or more, many of them carrying guarantees that ensure that they will sell.
  • 1.5% of lots account for 42 per cent of the total value of the sales.
  • 25 Basquiat works for auction that week with a combined $56.3 million estimate

But more than half of that Basquiat total should come from one single work.

Art Sales: They’ll Take Manhattan (Telegraph)

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