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Can I Use Data to Beat Christie's Auction Estimates?

artnome.com

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Re: Can I Use Data to Beat Christie's Auction Estimates?

#11

I'm interested in the data visualization aspect of the DB. Is there somewhere we can download the database to run queries against it in Tableau?

I'd like to open source at least a portion of the data to see if it is possible to build a community driven database. Could connect works back to museums and auction records as well as articles and research and potentially build a crowd sourced provenance.

Re: Can I Use Data to Beat Christie's Auction Estimates?

#13
Honestly, I think Christie's has an interest in their estimates being semi-accurate, but not _too_ accurate. They obviously want to be within an order of magnitude so they don't look stupid, but overestimating might drive up the price and make them money. Also, when things sell for double or triple the estimate, it makes the news, with Christie's name right beside.

Someone else said Sotheby's bought a database of art prices for 7 figures - why wouldn't a bunch of headlines with their name be worth a few million to them?

Additionally I think they have an interest in prices being as high as possible normally, with estimates high to encourage that. So the pattern would look like:

Antique Japanese woodcarving, $10MM predicted -> $12MM public predicted

Set of documents from Roman times, $5MM predicted -> $6MM public predicted

Van Gogh paintings (aka more headline potential), $10MM predicted -> $3MM public predicted

Then you get the headlines "Van Gogh paintings fetch more than triple the estimate at Christie's auction", which is free PR for Christie's.

Re: Can I Use Data to Beat Christie's Auction Estimates?

#15
This is awesome - really eye opening. This seems like a good proof point of the inefficiency of the art market (partially due to lots of missing data, partially due to the relatively small sample size of high-end art sales). Excited to see where this goes, and how it impacts the efficiency of the market.

Re: Can I Use Data to Beat Christie's Auction Estimates?

#17
What about guarantees? That is a large component of auction price estimates. A lot of these big name paintings are sold with the house guaranteeing a price to the seller. Can't have a full understanding of the industry without understanding that component.

Re: Can I Use Data to Beat Christie's Auction Estimates?

#19
post #15

This is awesome - really eye opening. This seems like a good proof point of the inefficiency of the art market (partially due to lots of missing data, partially due to the relatively small sample size of high-end art sales). Excited to see where this goes, and how it impacts the efficiency of the market.

Part of the art market's appeal is it's opacity, though - there's plenty of manipulation that would be outright illegal in regulated markets, and plenty of dirty money being washed through it - all contributing to the exploding valuations for fine art in recent decades. I wonder how much transparency and efficiency the art world actually wants, and what is the optimal amount to maximize art valuations.

Re: Can I Use Data to Beat Christie's Auction Estimates?

#20
post #8
post #6

Not sure what you're exactly building here, is it for fun or profit or both? I heard when Sotheby's bought the Mei Moses Database/Index last year, the valuation they paid for it was in the 7 figures. This type of data analysis is on people's minds more and more and potentially quite lucrative, good luck.

Thanks for reading my post. I am building a database of complete known works across the most important art and artists of the twentieth century. Currently no such database exists. Hoping to work with folks much sharper than I am to build out meaningful analytics around art and artists using this new data.

How do you collect the data for this??? Wondering how you measure your completeness, for instance.
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