Flipping Is Way Down—But Not Out

Tucked away in Artprice’s recent report on the last 12 months of the Contemporary art market is this interesting chart covering works that are being flipped at auction. Artprice’s definition is a work that is less than three years old that sells publicly. 

The only problem with the chart is that it uses the total dollar volume of sales rather than the number of sales or an average sale price. So a few high value works by an exceedingly hot artist like, say, Adrian Ghenie could skew the chart.

Nevertheless, we can see that from July 2015 to June 2016 there was a dramatic drop in flipping volume on the public market.

Even though the numbers are way down, the sales volume is still close to the first year of the over-heating art market in 2006-2007. We get a brief glimpse of the old art market looked like in the numbers from 05-06.

There is no indication yet that we’re headed further in that direction.