More Greek vases. Another excuse to veer off topic.

I used to think Boeotia vase coins were boring. I've seen the light. I was sorry to lose out in a recent auction on a wonderful tiny fraction with grapes on the reverse. But I did win another, well enough preserved to show the decoration on the vase.
It's a dealer picture because it hasn't arrived yet. I don't like posting prematurely, but it's an excuse to share another vase. Today I viewed the Christie's Antiquities sale, and they have a truly great Greek vase for sale, attributed to the Carpenter Painter. It's like visiting a museum where you can open the cabinets and handle the exhibits. They're not always of 'museum quality', but this is just astoundingly good.
Not quite ancient coin, but closely related I think

 

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Neat, nothing I could afford & don't need another side collection. Thats why I havent bought any roman glass, scarabs or Eye of Horus.

 

I had my eye on that one! Congrats!

 

Thats cool!

 

That is a very elegantly painted vase. Do you know what the estimate on it is?

 

£80-120k. Bargain for something so beautiful and historically significant. That barely buys a print by a trendy contemporary artist.

 

I just looked up the sale and browsed the e-catalog. Wow! There are some spectacular lots.

 

Yes. I think you can appreciate relative quality better in person, and the vase I posted is in a league of its own. The bronze mask is great, and the Tiberius cameo.

 

Congrats. I'm excited for you. That is a sweet buy. Unfortunately too rich for me, but I'm glad to see there are people able to buy these and share these beauties online for us average folks to enjoy.

 

*I* didn't buy the vase. It's up next week. Way out of my league, but it's nice to look. I suspect it will sell well ahead of estimate. Usually estimates are about right in these auctions, on average. But it's hard to know what to compare it to, because vases of this quality rarely come to market.

 

Those youths are all practicing Olympic sports, right? Two of them are holding the hand weights used for the broad jump. One has a discus and the last one a javelin.

The vase is shaped a little like a panathenaic prize vase only without Athena standing on one side and much smaller. I wonder if the potter and painter used this shape with these athletic competition figures on purpose to suggest a prize vase?

 

Yes, exactly. It's a lot smaller than the prize vases, and the shape a little different. But it's obviously a virtuoso display piece and I agree that the parallel can't be accidental.

 

25% buyer's premium? Seriously?

Coin auctions seem like a bargain...

 

Plus sales tax. And artist resale rights on contemporary. It's a sliding scale that varies by department and location. Totally untransparent. But the 'buyer's' premium is paid by the seller. Buyers adjust their bids. And smart sellers know that. If you analyse their accounts carefully the *average* seller's premium is negative. Consigners negotiate rebates. It's all quite murky, but these days Sotheby's and Christie's focus ever more on the ever higher end of the market.

 

Not sure what you mean by this. How can it be a "buyer's premium" if the seller pays it to Christie's?

 

If the government doubles taxes on gas, prices at the pump will increase exactly in proportion. It's a low margin business. So they can call it a tax on oil companies, but it's really a consumption tax. If one auction house has no buyer's premium and another has 90%, and they have almost identical coins for sale, who would bid the same hammer price on both? In the end the buyer pays an inclusive price for their purchases. The seller receives that price minus the auction house take. It's the seller that negotiates terms and the buyer that takes terms. So economically, the seller loses the auction house take. Smart buyers know that and negotiate rebates. Dumb buyers don't and get stung. The reason auctioneers do it this way is to take advantage of cognitive bias, so it's not neutral. And the calculation is complex; I know, because I wrote the excel spreadsheet;-)

 

So if I correctly understand what you wrote, buyers will (in advance) negotiate with Christie's for a rebate on any lot that they purchase?

 

No, buyers will decide what they're willing to pay in total and adjust their bid down to account for premium. It's inexact because most won't have my spreadsheet ;-)

Buyers can't negotiate, except by their bids. Only sellers negotiate. The auctioneer is agent for the seller. They are the client and they pay the fee, even if it is perversely structured as a buyer fee.

By analogy, imagine if the real estate market switched to buyer commission. The seller still chooses the agent. The buyer still decides the total they will pay. If one agent charges 25% and the other 10%, buyers won't offer the same base price to both agents.

 

Forgive my simple-minded way of paraphrasing this, but it boils down to "The buyer bases his/her maximum bid on the hammer price plus associated fees."

I'm fairly familiar with coin auctions -- I've acquired 2/3 of my coins at various auctions -- and of course the buyer's fee, my dealer's fee, et al., are part of the maximum bid consideration. So the Christie's antiquities auction is no different, other than factoring in its higher buyer's fee.

 

Yes, exactly. The fees are indeed surreal, as you say. They are positioning themselves to win only the biggest estates. But you can see where the money goes. Visit a coin auctioneer and it's a little office with a couple of people typing away on the emailed catalogue, with a few major auctions actually printed. Go to Christie's and you get doorstopper catalogues with multi-page blurbs, uniformed guards, different uniforms for the ushers, then various levels of experts distinguished by age and quality of tailoring. The cost base is immense.