High-End Auction Houses . . . Glorified Supermarkets ?
A few days ago, I was looking through the online catalog for the Antiquorum auction, being held tomorrow in New York City. I was surprised to see so many watches that are either (a) of very recent vintage, or (b) mass-produced watches that are readily available in the mall stores or on EBay. To get a better idea of what I am describing, check out Lot 28 (Ritmo Mundo), Lot 32 (a modern Glycine) and Lot 41 (Oris TT1 Divers). I wondered why such watches are being sold through these auction houses, when we can just go to the malls on onto our computers to buy them.
Well, apparently, the folks at Financial Times have been wondering the very same thing, and here is an article published a few days ago that considers some of these same issues. Some highlights of the article:
- describing the auction houses as "little more than glorified watch 'supermarkets' often used by retailers to off-load stock they have not managed to shift over the counter" . . . ouch!! glorified supermarkets? not exactly the images these esteemed auction houses are trying to project.
- the article suggests that the supply of high quality vintage watches has dried up for the moment, so the auction houses must find modern-day "filler" so that they will have enough watches to amass for an auction
I will admit to being puzzled about the economics of this whole situation. If Macy's is selling Oris at 30% off the retail price, how much more can this watch be worth when sold as Lot 41 in an Antiquorum auction? While I am not an expert in the Ritmo Mundo line, if you can find it on EBay with $799 BuyItNow or "Make Offer", why is Antiquorum estimating the auction price at $200 to $400? What possibly motivates a seller to offer through an auction house under these circumstances? Will it really be cheaper to buy this one through Antiquorum, rather than on EBay?
Some strange things happening in the world right now . . . I won't pretend to understand the economics of some of these auctions.
Thanks to Twitterer, TheSydneyTarts -- http://twitter.com/TheSydneyTarts -- for posting re the Financial Times article. It did address the issues that I had been puzzling about a few days earlier.
Jeff
