The NY Times is reporting on another Sotheby's sales installment of the Alfred Taubman collection. If you recall, Sotheby's guaranteed the former Sotheby's previous owner $515 million. Thursday evenings sale brought in an additional $13.04 million, while 8 lots failed to sell.
According to the NY Times so far the total of the Taubman sales at Sotheby's is $433 million with over $80 million still needed to balance out the guarantee, Sotheby's needs the January Taubman Old Master sale to be strong, as well as privately placing any unsold works from the earlier sales.
As we have seen in the past, auction house guarantees can be a very risky strategy.
The NY Times reports
Source: The NY TimesThe Alfred A. Taubman collection again brought disappointing results for Sotheby’s, which guaranteed the sales for $515 million.
Thursday night’s sale of 31 works from the American art collection of its former chairman, Alfred A. Taubman, totaled $13.04 million (including the buyer’s premium), below the low estimate of $15.1 million. Eight lots failed to sell.
Sotheby’s did better with its regular sale of American art Thursday night, which brought $26.6 million; all but 10 of the 56 lots sold.
The auction house raised $420 million from its previous two Taubman sales, leaving it some distance to go before making back the guarantee. (The total stands at $433 million). The next and last Taubman sale is of old masters on Jan. 27. And Sotheby’s may be able to sell the unsold Taubman works privately.
Thursday night’s Taubman sale did have one big winner — Martin Johnson Heade, a Luminist often referred to as “the Vermeer of American painting.” His “Great Florida Sunset” sold for $5.9 million, more than double the previous auction record for the artist — but less than the estimate of $7 million to $10 million.
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