Update: Halsey Minor vs Christie's

Fellow appraiser Scott Hale, ISA AM of Santa Fe, NM sent me an online article from Artinfo on the Halsey Minor/Christie's dispute. I posted on the dispute, and the court finding in Minor's favor on the AW Blog at the end of May. Click HERE for more information on the previous post and background on the loss of value lawsuit brought by Minor against Christie's.

The Artinfo article goes into some specifics with the appraiser, Beverly Schreiber Jacoby, president of the strategic art-consulting company BSJ Fine Art who determined the loss of value from Christie's refusing to return artwork to Minor during a strong market and the loss incurred by Minor not being able to sell during the peak and before the downturn of late 2008.

A great article for the appraiser to read, and case to be familiar with as it shows loss of value between market growth and market decline being upheld by a court of law.

The Artinfo article states

Minor argued that he had lost significantly more considering how much he could have sold it for if he had access to the work during the boom's sweet spot.

To calculate what that windfall might have been, Jacoby began with a tidy figure: $4 million, the amount at which Chelsea dealer (and long-time Prince champion) Barbara Gladstone valued the work in late August of 2008, when she was trying to make an unconsummated separate deal with Minor to sell four of his Princes individually. Jacoby took Gladstone’s asking price and subtracted 20 percent off the top — 10 percent for a discount to the imaginary world-class collector who would have acquired the piece, as is custom in the art trade, and another 10 percent for the dealer’s commission. That calculation yielded a value of $3.2 million for the work, had it been sold at the time.

According to Jacoby, Minor’s net hit was $1.7 million — the difference between the work’s estimated value at the height of the market ($3.2 million) and the price for which he sold it ($1.5 million). “I had to show the jury how the market actually works in a realistic scenario,” Jacoby said. “There was a whole trajectory, and it was very straightforward and very reasonable.” The jury agreed with her arithmetic.

The Prince's radical fluctuations in value over such a short time also reflect a more vernacular methodology, that of a famous art-collecting maxim: if you get it while it’s hot, you’d better sell when the market is raging.

To read the full Artinfo article, click HERE.