Sotheby's Acquires Mei Moses Art Indices

Sotheby's today announced the acquisition of the Mei Moses Art Indices, and will now be called Sotheby's Mei Moses. Sotheby's states they will use the indices to provide information to clients when working with their specialists. The news release does not specifically state how the indices will be offered to the public, but in the last paragraph it does say proprietary information will become available to collectors.

I will try to get additional information on what the plans are and if it will be offered to art advisors and appraisers. I certainly hope so as the data the indices provided was an excellent supplement to my appraisal market reports and also assisted in dealing with stale comparable information.

Sotheby's press release on the acquisition.

Sotheby's is pleased to announce the acquisition of The Mei Moses Art Indices, which will now be known as Sotheby' Mei Moses.  Widely recognized as the preeminent measure of the state of the art market, the indices use repeat sales - the sale of the same object at different points in time - to track changes in value. Through this acquisition, Sotheby's has unique access to an analytic tool that provides objective and verifiable information to complement the world-class expertise of the Company's specialists.

The indices comprise a constantly updated database of 45,000 repeat sales of objects in eight collecting categories, approximately 4,000 of which change hands each year. The methodology enables Sotheby's to compare the investment performance of Art against various asset classes, analyze its performance against myriad benchmarks and competitors and measure the impact of macro-economic and societal forces on the art market. Sotheby's Mei Moses uses existing data model and computation methodology to ensure consistency of the index.

"The collecting community is increasingly sophisticated and, in many cases, looking to analysis to understand the overall market, individual artist and category trends, the value of their collections, as well as gain insight into the timing of their consignments and purchases," says Adam Chinn, Sotheby's Executive Vice President.  "We are very happy to be in a position to provide collectors with proprietary information tailored to their needs, while at the same time helping us identify and examine trends that can inspire further innovations within Sotheby's to better serve an expanding client base."

Source: Sotheby's